Thinking Big: Strategy that scales. Mindset that multiplies.

Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. Today we get to talk with Alexandra Holcbarova from the thementoringeffect.com. She is a visionary and has the ability to bring out the best in people and uncover their full potential. She grew her own businesses in a range of different global markets including Europe, Thailand, Bahamas, and now Australia. On her journey, she discovered so much around human potential and experienced how to overcome a physical and mental crisis with the knowledge and tools that now she teaches others. Today we will discover: Self-Awareness is the first step to success in leadership, business or in everyday life. Judgment & comparison = suffering. Your thoughts influence how you feel So today, we are thinking big into our own self-awareness. Connect with Bob Gentle at the following social media link: Website https://thementoringeffect.com/ Email alex@thementoringeffect.com 3 simple steps to self-awareness. https://thementoringeffect.com/ Leaders are Readers, here are some free books for you to get. Free copy of Think and Grow Rich http://bit.ly/free-think-and-grow-rich-ebook The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge https://bit.ly/tagrchallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until next week, remember to always think big Thanks for listening! It means a lot to me and to the guests. If you enjoyed listening then please do take a second to rate the show on iTunes. Every podcaster will tell you that iTunes reviews drive listeners to our shows so please let me know what you thought and make sure you subscribe using your favorite player using the links below. Episode Transcription SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, self awareness, business, thinking, traveling, programmed, day, talk, life, means, important, friends, create, absolutely, perception, australia, story, aware, world, decisions 00:00 You are listening to the thinking big podcast. And it is such a pleasure to have you listening to the show. And today we're talking with Alexandra from the mentoring effect. And she is a visionary, and has the ability to really bring out the best in people and really uncover their full and true potential. She herself she's grown her own businesses in a range of different environments from all over the world, including Europe, Thailand, Bahamas, and now she's in Australia. And on her journey, she's discovered so much around human potential, and experienced how to really overcome physical and mental crisis, and the knowledge and tools that she's gained. That's what she's teaching others down. So today's show, we're going to talk about, you know, self awareness and how it's the first step to really any success, whether it's in business or in health, or in or in anything that you're doing. So today, we're thinking big on ourselves. 01:01 Welcome to the thinking big podcast with Sean Osborne. The show helping you think bigger into your life and potential Sean believes by equipping you with the tools, strategies and philosophies required to be successful in all aspects of your life you can achieve anything you believe in empowering our own growth makes a deeply positive and lasting impact on our lives, community 01:23 and our world. 01:24 Now, here's Sean, 01:25 Alexandra, I want to welcome you to the thinking big podcast, and I know the listeners are gonna get a huge amount of benefit from the stuff that you're going to be talking about. Now, before we get into get into all this great stuff that you do. Tell everyone a little bit about yourself and kind of how you got where you are. It's an interesting story. 01:47 Thank you very much, and really appreciate to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me. And I didn't expect that. Okay, I will talk about myself. I will try to be very quick. Well, yeah, I'm in Australia. I don't even know how I ended up here. But I was traveling a lot and always having businesses. And my background is basically having 10 years of even management and catering, working for Red Bull and working as a coach for American corporates, having been out of business, but it was in Thailand. And there was more restaurant bar, or coffee shop with some small food, healthy food. And yeah, I after that, I think I stay in Thailand around for years. But as we know, you know that all vacation destinations are not very pushy. That means you just do your business, you know, a little bit, I would say a holiday holiday way. It's just different, I would say a different set up. And after that I moved to Bahamas and I did some tourist tourism business there. And yeah, ended up in Australia in last five years. I'm living in Perth, Australia, and I was running two businesses, but the one of them, it's already closed because of the events. And that it was not really sustainable because we don't have any events scheduled for 2020 and 2021. Because all governments basically don't know what will happen. 03:18 Right? And we were Yeah, we were running community events. And Mr. Schreiner even, you're even looking at 2021 as being limited already. 03:27 Well, it's a it's different because I so I have my family still in Europe, and I can see how every country is reacting, or I would say his reaction on on cases with COVID-19. And the crisis is really having different development in each country. And I thought and I really hope that we will be able to travel in December, and I will be able to see my family over Christmas. But it looks like they starting their you know, second wave. We have fine here. But Melbourne is not fine. That means it's all changing every week. And I don't like to predict, you know, the divorce thing. But I am prepared. And that's why I decided to build more the other business that I have. And that's the mentoring effect. Because I believe people need education, people need self awareness. People need someone that will inspire them. And that's the same thing that you do. Because I believe this is the time that the world is suffering and other people suffer. I know a lot of people are really successful, what is great, but as always, you know some sadness and fear in the world. And I believe this is this time and people need us. That's all that's all. Yeah. 04:38 So you have done a lot of presently How do you lie to me I didn't get a travel until later in life. It seems like I was kind of sheltered and didn't get a lot of do a lot of traveling. I'm telling you, the world absolutely opened up even from a mindset standpoint and a self awareness standpoint. When I started traveling on maybe 10 1012 years ago, that really changed my self awareness personally. 05:08 Yeah, I think that's big thing traveling. And knowing the cultures and also knowing yourself when you are traveling and staying in the country for a little while, I always said when someone is traveling, go, don't go to you know, hotel and stay in hotel where everybody's you know, having their vacation, but travel with people travel, the way that you can actually be touched by culture. And you also get to know yourself if you're able to adapt, if you are able to accept and I think this is huge. It's definitely helped helped me to to be more self aware and be more open. 05:48 I would say, What is your what's the favorite place you've been to in the world? 05:54 My favorite place now when I'm in Australia, because I'm so far away. It's definitely Europe. And I would say Slovakia, you know, Czech Republic, Croatia. But when I'm there, I also miss Australia. And it's really hard to say I love I love Thailand and I love Bali. Probably that's there are two countries that I'm able to create. I'm able to connect with myself, I'm able to connect different way probably with people. And yeah, I think I just different vibes, I guess. Yeah, that means they're probably Thailand and Bali. It's, I believe it's like a mecca of people you know, that they want to create. They want to grow, they want to do something more in life. 06:39 Yeah. And that I, we I was able to go to Thailand, I think maybe a year and a half, two years ago. And I absolutely loved it there. It was, it was fantastic. Although I won't get into the naming of their cities, because whoever named some of those cities, just a genius. I'm sorry. We won't go there. So on self awareness, tell me what do you think? Is self awareness? What do you what does that? What does that look like? For you? 07:12 That's really great question. Thank you. Um, self awareness for me is to knowing myself knowing what is going on around me, that means be aware of my environment, and how my how environment is influencing me and others. And also, it's a, it's part of emotional intelligence, for me, to be self aware, is to really understand what I'm thinking, how I'm thinking, and what are what the thought is triggering me, while thought is making me feel better, it's more like you are able, when you're self aware, you're able to, I wouldn't say control yourself, because we don't want to be really controlling. But I would say you really can influence your behavior to get better results. Maybe that's the way to say it. 08:04 Right? Yeah, I think that a lot of our program software, I think we're programmed at a very young age up to age five or six of what are programmed. Self Awareness is what, you know, we were brought into the world and and we learned, what was programmed into us what was around us, you know, the people that our parents were with, you know, the things that they did the things that they look, it's like language, you know, we learned language based on just being enculturated in that. And I think that's, for me self awareness for a long time. I didn't, I didn't try to change my self awareness. So I just lived by the self awareness that was programmed into me. And until we figured that out, we're gonna continue debt for me, from a self awareness standpoint, we're gonna continue down that same path forever and ever until we until we realize that till we become aware of that, and yeah, that's huge. Now, how do you? Again, I think we've been kind of pre programmed and we can definitely change when we when we want to, but how do you really create, you know, our How do you think we create our realities and, and things that for us? 09:24 I will touch just that. What do you just say? Because I think that's great. What do you what you just mentioned, that's exactly what is happening. We are programmed. And in thinking about that, that we don't know even how we are programmed because we are programmed, actually from the age from one to three. That's really scary because we even don't know what happened that time when we were young, that young, and we don't know in what kind of situations we were. And I always say parents, like just the small thing like, like your kid, your children are playing around. You know, you have your visitors and they're playing gold around and two years or you know, one and a half, three years old is running around without beta, you know, when you scream at a child, like, go to take it, you know, you can run like that, you know, you can run naked for example. And that's already something that sentences can already program the child that in their 18, maybe 16, they will be a little bit shy to go on a beach in betas or you know, show a positive body like it will be really uncomfortable. And, and those small things are programming us and based on that, as you said, based on filters, we are creating our perception, or our reality. And that's, that's the first thing that I was going to talk about as, as we started with self awareness, because to knowing how we create our perception or reality is most important thing to actually have better life, or increase self awareness, or make better decisions, or get a better jobs or have better partnership, or be better parent. That's all major thing to know, like how that works. And that's when you mentioned that we are programmed, like something happened outside of us, like is any external event that is influencing us, we always put our perception on that you probably experience a lot of things, you know, like, you're going to movie for example, of a friend. And and I always say there's the major thing when you can see how we see the world different way. Because you go into the same movie. And when you going out from the cinema, your friend is like I didn't like the movie. And you're like, Oh, I love the movie. That means that's already really two different perceptions. Right? One see what I think basically, 11:46 yeah. And how we, I always tell people how, you know, don't believe anything you see. It's I mean, it's because it's all based on what your reality is. And there is your reality is not reality, your reality is just how you, you happen to see things and work. And we I'm telling you, we are picking up things left and right from all of our senses, what we see what we hear what we taste what we smell, we're picking up all this stuff, and it's all going through our own. I call it a BS, or our belief system, our own bullshit that is filtering everything through. And we see it how we want to see it. Yeah, 12:24 yeah. And that's also when you're working with clients, because I believe you're working with a lot of clients that you can't really guess what they think when they started talking about their story or their their issues, or, or whatever they want to talk about with you. You can't really say like, I know you, what are you talking about? Because you don't know. And that's what I'm always saying to all coaches as well. You can't really say I know, or I understand. You need to let the person to really, really go deeper in their story in their world in their perception. And until you are super, super connected, I would say and you can see with their eyes, you can't really say You understand, right? And I think that's a big thing as well. 13:06 Yeah, and I'm a big proponent of people need to be self awareness. And if you look at the word education that actually comes from the word have to learn within, it's to do go it's, it's all within we all have to and if anybody tells me, this is what you need to do. Nobody knows me, like me, I can look and see and look at their steps and say yes, I want to I want to do that. That that is a great idea. But how does it internalize to me how does it because nobody knows me? But me? Nobody. 13:37 And and that's so funny because that's exactly how our conscious and unconscious mind works. That means if someone actually tell you you have to do this, or you should do that our unconscious mind is straightaway fighting, and is saying no, I don't want to do it. It's just reaction on on what is happening we have programmed that by it's it's how our mind works. And I would love to touch when you when you mentioned beliefs and all that programming because there are major fields they create or they they are helping us to, to see you know the world different with different eyes or through different eyes. And that's also when you sit when you mentioned beliefs, there are memories as well. Those are values what is important for us what is priority in our life? And also it's it's I think I mentioned memories, but attitudes are decisions we made before and and all those small things around us are what creates us actually influencing us unconsciously and we don't know about that or majority of people don't know about that. 14:37 Yeah, I call that we're flying on autopilot. We have no idea it's just it's just going on autopilot. And you know it's funny you mentioned that it's I've often explained to people it's like when you go and you you've wanted something for a while and all of a sudden you buy it let's say it's a car and you buy I called the Volkswagen a pack but if you if you want this car you want this car and you say me finally get it The second you get it, you drive off the lot, and all of a sudden, you see those cars everywhere. My wife does the same thing with shoes, she'll buy shoes, and it's like, shit. Now I see him, I see those same shoes. They're like, once we become consciously aware of something, our subconscious thinks, okay, that's important to us. So now I'm going to pay attention to that out there. And now all of a sudden, there's one, there's one because our subconscious thinks it's, it's important. 15:28 Yeah, that's so great, we'll just say, because that's exactly where our focus go. Basically, we starting to see the things because we are focusing on the things that we never really focused on before. And it's so important, I will actually probably touch the base, because this is coming to the, to the basic how we create this reality and how we actually feel. And I think that's, that's another thing that people, if people will start to be aware of their thoughts, they can actually change the reality or the perception. But I always if I can, if I'm made share, it's like a small story to understand where I'm coming from. Absolutely. Because it's probably something that everyone experience because I'm talking always about the dinner like you are preparing dinner, just imagine that you're preparing dinner for your partner or friends, or his anniversary dinner or something before is very important for you. And now there are two sides of things like how we think or how we react or respond. And I always compare it like, okay, that partner or a friend is not coming and he's not answering the phone is not answering the messages. And naturally, we are getting frustrated. I don't know if you experienced something like that before. That you probably can imagine, like we are angry and our stories started to grow the way that we're coming from fear, we're coming from anger, frustration, that means we're really coming from that reaction side. And our story will be or he doesn't love me or he doesn't want to come or he's not respecting me, or maybe he's with someone else. And and all that would happen is basically our other thought story that we created. It's really triggering us to really negative emotions. That means we are angry, frustrated, and based on that emotions that we created with thought and story. We are overreacting when the person coming home Actually, we probably started to scream or we started to be like, Oh, yeah, you light and we are angry. And the thing is, what I'm talking about is the result, that probably you're not going to talk that evening, maybe the dinner Will you know end up in rubbish bin, 17:39 I'll be in the doghouse. 17:43 And it's not really nice evening, but when we are actually self aware. And and we know that our thoughts are creating that reality that we can start to think about better story than means just change the story. And when we when we are writing for a partner or a friend and it's late we can start with thing. And it comes from love, I always said come from love and compassion first and very subtle thing Dubai. Okay, maybe he started with business partner or, or starting work. And he's probably said or she's probably said that she's missing the dinner, she's missing out on great dinner and or something happened. And that means I should probably count down and think about that person how I can actually that person may have I can make him or her feel better, but they will come home late. And that's absolutely different story that makes us feel actually really good and calm. And we don't react, but we respond that means the person coming home, I guess you can already, you know, imagine that you are actually welcoming the person you're happy. And you're probably having that result of the evening that you have to get a great dinner together and, and probably talking about what happened. And I believe that's much better result. And I say this example because it's very basic, and probably a lot of people can connect with with coming or waiting for someone with dinner. And that same in business. If you respond or respond you can have better results is the same with parenting is same with the friends and in any situation. 19:21 Yeah. And a lot of times you know us as human, I don't know if it's just by default or what but we always think that the action is what causes how we feel. In other words, something happens and and that's what causes it. And I go back to it. Not too long ago I was in a in a car accident. And there was three of us. And I got out and I'm like that's that's what insurance is for, you know shit happens that's, you know, not not too big of a deal. Everyone's okay. Another guy got out and he was absolutely irate. I mean, he was pissed off. He was yelling he was screaming and I had to sit back and think okay, you If the accident is what caused people to get mad, if that's what caused him to get mad, then everybody that got in an accident would get mad. So it's not the action that caused it. It's the meaning that we put on that action that actually caused, you know, he, you know, he put a meaning that he was gonna be laid, he put the meaning that he was gonna cost him money. He he put meanings on on that accident. And that's why he was mad. It wasn't that had nothing to do with the accident. No, it's how we perceive things and how near the meaning that we put on things that, you know, it's never the action. It's never never that. 20:36 Yeah, it was it was your story, like you said, you know, like you you actually got out from the car, and you were like, oh, everybody's Okay, that's great. Your first story or first thought was positive, basically, because you focus on other people, you sold them there, okay. And you, you came from love because you care about us. And that make you also think different way. And that thought make you karma? Exactly the meaning you said, you know, you put different meaning and different story on the event. And I think that's so important to understand that we are actually creating our reality. And if we are able to be happy, and it's just such a big thing to understand that it's just a thought. Yeah, we are just a thought away from being happy. 21:25 Thought away from being anything that we want. Yeah, exactly. Positive or negative. Yes. You're one negative thought. Negative two, I think it goes both ways. It goes up, it goes down. It goes both ways. 21:39 Think about that. It's just such an amazing concept. Because I think it was Sidney banks. He was talking about three principles. And three principles are actually mind consciousness and, and thought. And he's always saying there is nothing else. It's just a thought. Because it is what it is. That's all what it is. The world is just a thought everything what we decide to do, what we do, or what we are not doing. That's all just limiting belief, a limiting belief is again, just a thought. 22:07 Yeah. Yeah. Good that I think it was a Dr. Richter or Viktor Frankl that said that, you know, the only thing we have 100% control of is the time between we get an input, and how we respond. We have 100% control of how we take that input, how we take that action, and how we respond. That's the only thing that we actually have 100% control of. Yeah, yeah. And oh, go ahead. Go ahead. 22:36 I was just thinking that probably great thing to add, to this conversation is that we are actually having seven around 70,000 thoughts a day. And when you are thinking that you're not self aware, or you are not actually living conscious life, or you're not trying to live conscious life, and you're not available, you're thinking, you don't have any idea what kind of choices you're doing and decisions you're making. An and we have from that 70,000 thoughts is around 20,000 choices we do daily. And I think that's really crazy number and I'm talking about things like you know, what kind of water you pour into your glass? Or what, I don't know what, like you start to walk first, you know, it's left or right. It's just small things. Right? can actually if once all your day? 23:24 Yeah, absolutely. And that to me, that's why one of the reasons for me meditation or gratitude stuff in the morning is so important. It gets me really in the right frame of mind the right step the right, you know, it gets me in the, to me the right vibration to be in. And, and for us, I think it's kind of it's, you know, I think we're both kind of in the same mindset. But for people listening, you know, what, what are some of the benefits that you see, in increasing our mindset, increasing our self awareness? You know, what are the benefits that that people will have when they start? I know, I've got tons of stuff that that on that, but for others, I mean, it's it's such a huge thing, you know, and what are some of the benefits that you see 24:11 how it's exactly what you say, tons. But as a comparison comparison for me, when I was actually not having any meditation or any any habits in the morning, any rituals that it will actually helped me to be self aware or have I'm thinking how I'm preparing myself for a day, for example, that was really huge difference in my working day. I was, I was able to focus now. Like I'm able to focus now and don't be distracted when I'm actually starting the day with meditation or, or doing things very consciously. I'm really trying to think about step by step like what I'm going to do during the day. What is my intention? That means that that has really a huge influence on performance. And because because we are all business owners and what have you, you're ready No, that is so important to work effectively or efficiently and, and that's the majority of people, they don't understand that small thing like morning ritual can change their life or they their day and performance. The benefits are also it's about health. Like, that's actually even like cardiovascular diseases, I think you can, you can avoid them by being calmer and respond responsive, not reacting. That means you actually have you increase your emotional intelligence and you're making better decisions in your work with your team, you actually start to also Elisa a little bit different way, that means it helps you to connect better with other people, even deeper connections in your relationship, you can definitely build up deeper relationships with friends. And with kids, when you're a parent. And there are benefits like you can land the better job if somebody is looking for for work. If you are building up self awareness, you can definitely land a better job and better position. You can have better finance, you can have huge success in your business. Every successful business person will tell you that they meditate or they do something like that, or they they are aware how they work, how they make decisions. And the biggest thing is probably that making conscious decisions. I believe that was big thing for me to really understand, based on what I'm doing decision, because I'm angry at someone or because I can really sit down and say write down pros and cons and and really see what will be the benefit of decision. That means to learn how to read to respond is so important. And we know we can save people's lives when we are responding and reacting. Yeah, I don't know, it's a huge like, it's a lot of very health benefits for brain, you you really can live longer, and have better better thinking. And yeah, I don't know, it's just so many. Probably, health is for me, probably most important that I feel so awake, I feel so energized. I guess that's the method. 27:09 And what's funny is, when I first started getting into this, I would see people doing things like morning rituals that you talked about. And I would think oh, that's just some woowoo you know, crap that I was that no one actually does. You know, I remember years ago listening to Tony Robbins, and you know how he got up every day and, and, you know, did his priming and did his you know, doing all the stuff? I'm like, Yeah, yeah, that's bullshit. But they, but here's the thing. You look at successful people, and they all do it. It's not some woowoo it's not. It works. It absolutely works. 27:48 And it is really funny because I was I was the same exactly what you said, I was like, Ha that can change your day, when you will have morning ritual that can change anything, you know, any any habits. But when you think about creating healthy habits and rituals, I would, I would say we don't need to call it rituals if someone you know, doesn't like the bird. But it's some kind of discipline that you have around your morning, that you're able to say like I'm waking up at five, for example. And I have my 30 minutes yoga, I have 10 minutes meditation, at least. And I'm always evaluating what happened last day, the day before, and thinking about my intention and what I want to achieve the day ahead. And for me that that just that small thing, just calmed me down and prepare me for a day. And I will be very honest. Last week, I had one or two days that I didn't do any morning ritual because I felt funny, I don't know, I wasn't really focused. And because I didn't do any morning rituals, I was so absolutely opposite of productive. Like that day was a disaster. I didn't do anything like I ended up to you know, scroll down Facebook and didn't want to do it. Right. Don't do. I don't really scroll down through social media. I'm trying to focus only you know, I have one hour for social media, I'm posting and doing advertisement and whatever I need to do. Or I'm talking with my digital marketer, and that's all and I'm not scrolling. I just ended up scroll down and thinking all over the place. And I think he was all over the place. And that was really a big example or a big wake up call for me again to say, Oh, yeah, now I can see my morning rituals works. And I really need to do that because it's setting up my day to be successful. And it's setting up me to be more focused and I'm actually much better with clients as well, but I'm actually doing my morning rituals. And yeah, I think it's important for everyone who never ever tried just probably I will I will such as to start with small thing. Yeah, but very small thing just to take a piece of paper having next to your bed and and start a journal. What do you think about First thing in the morning, what is your first thought? And started just noticing yourself, you know, like who you are? How do you think just small thing like that just to really go back to your heart and and see how you think how you feel and what you mentioned, gratitude is amazing just to really think about one thing that you're grateful for. 30:20 Yeah, that can absolutely change your day. And it actually to me when when you when we do this stuff, and we do it consistently, obviously, there's days that we don't do it tell me we're obviously not. Nobody's perfect. We always do this, but it does to me. It changes my perception of things. It changes my decision making, it changes everything that I do when I'm in that, right. I call it a vibration. But when I'm in that right vibration, I make much different decisions, I make much different. I kind of liken it to health. So when you're trying to get healthy, and you're you're not at that vibration, you're not at that consciousness, it is so hard to do. It's like, it almost seems impossible. But then once you do it, and you get into that vibration, you get into that self awareness, it almost becomes like how did I not do this? And I think that's where that it puts you in that in really in that space? Or in that vibration? 31:24 Yeah, I love Jesus say that. After that we are thinking how, how come they can do it, how they can live like that. It's so funny how that change exactly like you change your life, you change your perception and your mornings and your vibes energy. And I will be very honest, from the time that I'm really looking inside, why I'm how I'm thinking and what I actually really want. And that's what I will probably suggest to other people, if they can think about when they are in business, usually solid traitors has you know that that issue that we are so much into business. And we don't have time to work on business, but we don't really know where we are in business. And instead of thinking about yourself, who you are, and we want to be and how you want to show up. And it's connecting me with people and clients a little bit different way. And I love it because it's just really being there for my clients and understand what they want. And all those small things like habits and rituals and being focused is actually helping to achieve that result probably just really recommended, especially with for people, they they really work for themselves. And it's really hard. I know, it's hard, especially now under lockdown people that sell only and that's the time to really do those small exercises. 32:47 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's like we have to, I don't care what we do. But we have to be more if we want more we have to. So I know we're you know, to me, it all starts with personal awareness. And and and you know that our mindset, our self awareness, but it's all it all starts with us. But it does, it affects our business, it affects our careers, it affects everything it spills over, but it does, I do think that it all starts with us. And we can't, we can't be better. Until we until we are better. You know, we've got to get to that level before we can. And what's funny is you you kind of mentioned this, but when we get to these upper levels, we start attracting people. In that level, we start seeing, you know, like the Volkswagen, you know, once I once I now I'm at at level eight, let's say now all of a sudden, I didn't even see these level eight people over here that I can do business with. But now, hey, look at all these level eight people. They're there. They're everywhere. And we attract what we do me we attract what we are. 33:48 I have really personal experience. And that's really well sight. What it has mentioned is I mean, I came to Australia, I was I was going through some personal issues of trauma. And I was very that was my probably bottom that I hit. And it's so funny when I see that now, and I'm looking at the events and how I how I like how I was in and what kind of energy I had to spread. I was thinking like what I'm spreading out like I was really probably sad. I was very down and I actually attracted that kind of people. Yeah, I got all those friends that were really down. They had like past depressions and it was just so different. And when I actually broke on myself and was that it was probably major thing that I really started to focus on is personal development because I wanted to be you know, old Alex like the Alex that I know. And I remember and there was these fun laughing having friends and fun and grading business, all the things that I actually I kind of couldn't find it. And when I found it again I was Yeah, I just have amazing people around. And even my clients changed exactly what you said, I'm just having exactly clients that I want to work with. And it's all marketing or messaging or energy. Because I always said, when people are focusing so much on digital marketing, because I'm doing a lot of courses around business. Always think about yourself, and your intention behind the post, or, or message or picture. Anything. What are you putting out there? We'll come back to you. But you need to be really intentional. And you really need to be honest and coming from heart. Right? And yeah, that's probably 35:36 Yeah, absolutely. So do you know you're you're in Australia? The only thing that we get here from Australia now? Do you guys actually have shrimp on the barbie? See, the only thing we have is the only thing we have is Outback. Outback Steakhouse. That's the only thing we have. That's Yeah. Oh. Oh, man. See, I had to ask that. That's, that's. So what is your favorite out of all the places you've traveled? What has been your favorite culture? I think culture really does develop our self awareness. And it's like when I go to one of my favorite places is turkey going to going to Turkey, I just the vibration, the the culture just really. I know, it invigorates. Me it's it's something that really, really lifts me when when I'm in that, that environment. And I think that I think the environment that we put ourselves in, really helps dictate our self awareness, it dictates you know, who we are? Again, I think Jim Rohn said it, you know, people you hang out with the most is you become the average of that. So when we put ourselves in these cultures in these in these places, then, you know, we we tend to be like that. 36:57 Yeah. Yeah, that's, it's very interesting question, because I actually never really think about that the way that you just ask. And as I mentioned, that, for me, when I was alone, traveling was probably a great time. Because it's, it's really, like you have time to connect with culture and people. When you are with your family, it's not that easy, because you're staying with your family. But when you're alone, you're you're looking for people to talk and, and you're discovering more and that's why I will love to travel by myself as well. And I just probably Bali was was the place that made me very creative, creative, very excited, very driven. And I was amazed by places because the nature there and and also there is a lot of people, they they trying to discover, they trying to develop things that all I can, you know, like new thinkers and people very eager to achieve something and by the same time, they are very calm and connected and happy and, and chilled. That means it's kind of like they came to environment to really prepare, be prepared to hard work, but that of an environment is actually calming you down. I guess it's really like an opposites, like a two poles. And that that's vibrant, probably I love it there. And it's a beautiful place to start even start a business, you know, take your laptop and start to create. I really like that I know. But on the other hand, I love Italy, and I love Croatia. And probably because it's connected in my childhood and all my friends. We always travel there. We spend so much time on yachts and just having fun. And talking about business, talk about family talk about, you know, music. There was always just I would say that that is the time that I really don't try to brag, but I'm going to Croatia and Italy. And he's really just traveling and just eating beautiful food. 39:04 So Croatia, that's an interesting story. Do you know who the President of Croatia is? Oh, no, 39:11 I don't know. Actually. 39:13 I'm pretty sure it's Croatia. I'll have to go back and jump but I went to school with her. Really? Yes. Yes. She was in the States as a as a as a as a foreign exchange student and went to went to school with her. 39:27 That's really funny. Story. Yeah. 39:31 Yeah. Because, yeah. 39:35 So you've got two things up here that are that are really great things. You've got the three simple steps to self awareness. That is a downloadable thing. And then you also have the 21 day challenge for boosting your business. Those are great things and can you tell tell us a little bit about those because people can actually go up and download those and actually also watch the videos on the 21 day. Challenge. 40:01 Yes, thank you very much for asking about that. The, yeah, the PDF reader with three simple steps to self awareness is basically all the stuff that we already talked about. But it's simplifying the things that you can do for yourself, even, you know, two, three minutes at your home, you don't need to be prepared, you can just start to do it and build up your self awareness with three simple steps like journaling, writing your morning thought that I already mentioned, and take your cell phone judgment. Voltron is explaining PDF, it's very important because judgment and comparison are really decreasing the energy from our brain. And we actually perform on lower levels, though, as we tried to really avoid comparison and judgment. That's, that's another thing that we can probably talk about another hour. 40:52 Yes, at least. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, I'm just saying that, you know, the, you know, the, the download that you have on the three simple steps, it's such an easy thing. But it can make such a huge impact on our lives, it seems so simple three, you know, three things. But I guarantee if you actually go and you do those three things every day, you will have, you will have changed in your life. No doubt about it. 41:23 I absolutely agree. And that's why I tried to simplify that. And I know people are like, Oh, this can change my life. Those steps can change my life. But I see exactly what can actually those face steps can change your life forever. Yeah, I mean, it's important. And that's why it's awesome. They're so easy. 41:40 Yeah. And what people don't realize is when you start changing, you know, we talked about it a little bit in, in part of this podcast, but when you start changing things, you start looking at things different. So you start attracting different things in your life. It's not just those three steps. But those three steps lead to many other things that are byproducts of steps. Yeah. 42:01 Yeah, you're changing your perception, you're changing your emotional intelligence, you're changing your decisions, your choices, and you at the end, changing your results to be greater and better. 42:11 Yes. And that's what we're, that's what we're all here for. 42:15 Yes, well, I 42:16 absolutely want to thank you for for giving us your time being on the podcast it out, I'm telling you, this stuff is I, I believe in this more than I believe in most things, because I know for a fact, for me, this stuff is absolutely changed my changed my life, hands down, doing this, and all of that, I can tell you 100% guaranteed anybody listening, if you see anybody that is successful, I don't care if they're successful at sports, I don't care if they're successful at business, I don't care if they're successful in relationships. They do this, it's it's that simple. If you want to be successful, you have to be self aware, you have to control, you've got to control your own thoughts. Not not your programming. Not not the world. But but you. 43:11 Yeah, thank you very much for her for this. And I thank you very much for having me. And I love to talk about that, because I think is most important thing right now. And my self awareness as well, you know, helped me to grow my business and, and my amazing partner, she'd been my partner like, amazing relationship and amazing relationships with my family. And, yeah, I just can't recommend that more to just try, just just do it for seven days, just try for seven days, or you know, 18 days, whatever works for anyone. But as you said, it's most important thing, and and I believe we should really, really start to be aware of what's going on. And I hear more people say, Well, I don't have time. And right now, if you don't have time right now, all that's going on. If you don't have 10 minutes to take right now, you didn't have frickin half the time. I'm sorry, but it's now like right now more than ever. So again, 44:09 thank you so, so much. Such a huge inspiration in such great, great stuff. And I know that people are gonna get that, that download to people just do it. spend seven days trust me, just do it. It will, it will help will help change your life. 44:27 Just do it. Yeah, just try to 44:28 be like Nike just do. Well, thank you again. Thank you very much. And we will talk later. 44:35 Yeah, thank you very much on this pleasure. Thanks.

Bob Gentle What are the best digital marketing strategies? https://amplifyme.agency/ Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. Today we get to talk with the best digital marketing person I know of, Bob Gentle. If you own, want to own your own business, or you have a side hustle going on, you will want to listen to this episode. Bob helps entrepreneurs around the world discover, set, and achieve their goals online… Bob also hosts The Digital Marketing Entrepreneur podcast with some of the best small and solo marketers, consultants, and creators across the globe. My biggest takeaways from this episode are the following marketing strategies, what they are, and when to use them: Short-term strategies Medium-term strategies Long-term strategies So today we are thinking big about your digital marketing. Get my Traffic & Conversion Prompts FREE - Grab my bucket list of prompts I use to drive traffic and boost conversion rates with clients every day. https://amplifyme.agency/ Connect with Bob Gentle at the following social media link: Website https://amplifyme.agency/ Email bob@amplifyme.agency The Digital Marketing Entrepreneur Show Bob Gentle: AmplifyMe https://amplifyme.agency/podcast/ Leaders are Readers, here are some free books for you to get. Free copy of Think and Grow Rich http://bit.ly/free-think-and-grow-rich-ebook The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge https://bit.ly/tagrchallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until next week, remember to always think big Thanks for listening! It means a lot to me and to the guests. If you enjoyed listening then please do take a second to rate the show on iTunes. Every podcaster will tell you that iTunes reviews drive listeners to our shows so please let me know what you thought and make sure you subscribe using your favorite player using the links below. Episode Transcription SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, podcast, business, mastermind, medium term, marketing, digital marketing, absolutely, long term investments, smaller businesses, big, content, solopreneurs, thinking, understand, build, product 00:54 I truly want to welcome Bob Gentle to the podcast today, I have wanted to have you on here. For my own reasons, I get to spend, you know, 30 minutes to an hour with you picking your brain on what you do. Because it is so important, especially to you like to my listeners that people who are solopreneurs. They're early in their, their businesses, they're getting started, they're wearing many hats, trying to do everything. Most people don't either do it correctly, or they don't do it at all. And that's digital marketing. And that's how you, you know, sell your stuff. That's how you get business. That's I mean, I could have the best product in the world. But if I can't do what you do, or if I can't hire what you do, I'm not gonna sell a damn thing. It's it's not gonna go anywhere, because I just don't know how to do that. And so, everybody again, welcome, Bob, tell us a little bit about about yourself. Hi, Sean, thank you so much for having me. And, yeah, I am really excited to be on other people's podcasts, because it's not something I do very often. So in simple terms, my business is about Unlocking Potential. 02:32 That's really how I would sum it up, that digital marketing is about making something really magical happen, it's about allowing a value exchange to happen. So I have something that's a value to somebody out there that really needs it. How do I communicate that value strongly enough that that one person who needs it the most will go, that's the guy I need. And everything around that is digital marketing. So that's essentially what I do. I do it for tiny little businesses through a membership site. So really, through sort of mentoring and guiding and Wayfinding. And then I do it within a coaching group environment where I'm working with sort of 1520 business owners at the same time. And then I do it on a one to one basis for some, some more established companies. And then I do it as part of a product, a corporate consulting layer. 03:31 within all of that, there's all the strategy and tactics and technology that you would expect to find. But it's for me, it's more about the philosophy that underlies it. It's, it's, it's digital marketing, but it's not a lot of the time about the tech and the tactics, it ends up a lot of the time, especially for the smaller businesses being personal development. Because if you don't understand your value, how can you possibly hope to communicate that? Yeah, so there's so much just to unpack there. And and I think one of the problems that I had early on especially was I Thought Marketing was going to be something like, like Apple and Microsoft do it's like, and is me as an individual I, I can't brand myself, like apple, like Microsoft, like McDonald's, like these big names. And trying, I tried for a while to brand kind of brand and I just could not break through I could not you know, I spent so much money on your marketing and it's like, there has to be a different way to market. Someone like me that's coaching. That's more personal with people. It's not necessarily a big company and and 04:46 just in my mind, it was all about a brand and how how different is it from liking your work with you know, tiny businesses and in larger companies. 04:57 What is the philosophy difference? I mean, how did the 05:00 To look different to, to the public to, to the marketing to, and what are some of the differences between being a big company and being able to brand and being a small company and not really having the money to really produce it, what I call a brand. 05:17 I think if we look back at the roots of what is a brand, or what is a corporate identity, 05:25 we go back to the old tribal days where you had the tribe, you had the chief, the chief was the figurehead. 05:34 And that was a personal brand. Alongside that there was the tribe identity, whatever it was some some weird constellation of feathers with a certain kind of 05:45 pigment, perhaps. But at the end of the day, there was a standard behind which everybody rallied, and that would be the logo, possibly up on a flag. 05:55 And, really, that's what a brand is, it's the mythology and the stories that live within a community. 06:02 And that they express through there, and haven't thought this through in advance, I'm just sort of winging it here. But through their ceremonies, and through what they put out into the world, the stories they tell, and the stories people tell about them, their legend. 06:20 So essentially, that's our brand. And if you are Apple, you can afford to invest billions of dollars making that happen. But if you are, Shawn Arbor, Bob, you can afford, you don't have pockets deep enough to tell the tab those stories travel for you. 06:39 But what we do have are 06:43 what worked back in the old days, which is a face. And there's something really interesting. And usually I use this analogy, when I'm talking about the importance of video marketing, for example, or the power of a selfie, it's the human face, that if you can imagine driving down the highway, your brain is taking billions impressions every hour. But if there's somebody standing at the side of the road, and they're kind of leaning over, and they're looking directly in your car window, you're going to notice it and you're going to remember all day. 07:21 And this is what we have that Apple in the form of Steve Jobs kind of leveraged. Steve Jobs was a front man. Elon Musk is a front man, Richard Branson is a front man in front man matters for a reason, we can do exactly the same. And it's because the brain is hardwired to notice faces, pay attention to faces, build empathy with faces, and face is something that we can bring into our unconscious very easily. We build relationships with people, not organizations. So for me, I guess what we can do, as very small organizations is leverage that sort of biological imperative to understand that a face matters, we're hardwired to remember them. 08:13 And we can make that work for us by showing up in people's lives as people and not as organizations. Does that make sense? Yeah, it really does. And it's, you know, and when you said that, it made me think back when, when I see like, for instance, the Apple logo that does invoke a feeling. I mean, it really does, even though it's not a person, and you know, what you're saying is for someone like me, I can invoke the same type of feelings, but it's going to be on a much more personal level, not necessarily a logo, you know, logo level, but it absolutely does. When I look at, you know, for instance, if I look at a Microsoft logo, I don't get the same feelings as looking at an apple logo. It does invoke different things, even at a subconscious level. You're absolutely right. But the amount of friction required for that to become embedded in your unconscious is huge. And that's why it costs so much money. 09:13 Because in order for them to become embedded in the collective unconscious of a country, that just costs a ton of money. And also, importantly, because they're a mass market product, they have to have a large, large, a large number of people that they've influenced you or I don't need that. We just need to influence a small number of people in equally powerful ways, but as much more intimate. So we don't we don't need all that we can still achieve the same results, but the people who matter. And I think 09:48 I mean, I work with personal brands, and I work with corporations, but I will always 09:55 In fact, I won't even work with an organization anymore. If they're not willing to have somebody 10:00 Step up and inject themselves into the story. 10:03 If they just want to have marketing done to them, I walk away, because I know, they're not going to be able to achieve the results they want, within a reasonable time. 10:13 My business is called amplify for a reason, it's because whatever you do, I'm going to make it bigger. And 10:20 if I can't get a person to participate in that, I know I'm not going to be able to achieve the results I want. So that's, that's my philosophy there. And you think there is a 10:32 shift in how marketing especially the last, in the last five years, you know, the internet's really kicked off? You've got Facebook, you've got Instagram, do you think marketing fundamentally has changed? Because I know for me, for instance, all of my right now at least, all of my marketing is really, I call boots on the ground, it's, you know, making connections with people. It's that you know, what you're talking about that personal side? Do you think even on a even on large businesses, I would have to imagine that 11:06 there is a personal side, you know, you have the frontman you, to me You have to have that nowadays, especially for us smaller businesses, you have to have that personal side, I think that's, I'm not sure how it was prior to, you know, I remember my first company back in, you know, 2000, you know, all of my marketing was done, like online was, I mean, on TV, commercials, it was print, it was in magazines. And the fundamental change, I couldn't even imagine doing that now with with my company now, I couldn't even imagine it. 11:40 But it would still work. I think there's just so many other opportunities. Now, that is not necessarily the best route to market for everybody. 11:50 When I interview my podcast guest, one of the questions I regularly ask is, okay, your your business has maybe your Facebook ads business. So I'm talking to you about what you do, how you do it for your clients. But let's move away from that. And you tell me, how does opportunity come to you. And there are really only five routes, it either comes through the result of paid activity, and you described some of that. So you can do TV ads, you can do Facebook ads, you can do Google ads, there's lots of ways you can pay for attention. Or it can come to you as the fruits of content marketing. So you're super busy on social media, you're posting on YouTube, you've got a podcast, people encounter you, they discover you, and a proportion of those people are nurtured back to the point where they decide they want to do business with you. And that's inbound marketing. 12:44 And then there's outbound sales activity. So I make phone calls I prospect that's active outbound sales activity. And then there's referral marketing, which is what you're discussing, it's, I build a reputation, I build a network. And that network is out there. as ambassadors for me, an opportunity trickles back through that network. And I think if you're really smart, you understand, okay, there are those four routes. And I have strategies and tactics to address each one. That's a lot of work. So 13:19 I personally, I don't have an outbound sales process at all in my own business. But I have clients for whom that's really important, and other clients, it's all referral. So how can we make that work better? 13:32 So I would never really disregard one of those routes over any other it's just how do we make constellation work best for you? 13:40 And for like for a smaller company? Is there a best route? Do you think you think there's a best way? Or what's the first way that you would go after marketing? If you were a small company? And what's the first way you would go, but I think the mistake a lot of people make is they put all the emphasis on marketing, and they forget about sales. And there's a problem there that you can't send anyone a bill for being famous. You just can't You have no right to send somebody a bill, just because you're super amazing, famous. And a lot of people's approach to marketing is I just want audience audience audience, but they forget about the product, and they forget about an actual method of selling it the offer. So the place I would start is really understanding your product. And for a lot of people, their product is themselves. So you need to spend a bit of time thinking about what is it that people really love about me? What is it when people hire me? 14:46 What's the pain that they want the pain killer to come and fix? And what's my X Factor really look at? 14:53 What is the spirit of what it is I'm doing? 14:57 And then you need to look at who's it for 15:00 very specifically, and because if you can't draw a line between your value and the person that needs it, and really understand what both of those two parts are, you're gonna have a problem. So I would start there first. Yeah, I think that was one of my big problems that I had to do. Do I call it my ideal, you know, a client avatar. 15:20 People call the things but until I got really good clarity on who exactly, my ideal client was, I spun my wheels for a long time just producing stuff and not not really getting any results at all. Yeah, until until I got that ideal client, you know, what's the problem that I'm trying to? I'm trying to solve for somebody? And who is that person? And how, you know, so here, it goes back to, I've got my ideal client, I know who it is. Now, how do I get in front of that person? How do I market to exactly the person that I need to get in front of, for my product. And I think that's, that's where the problem that I had for a long time. I think the avatar, really understanding who your customer is, is really important. But I find that the mistake is that's where a lot of people go first. Because what I want to always pull people back to isn't, 16:18 is your value, nevermind the customer, we can understand who that customer is, once we understand what it is you want. What's your, what's your mission? 16:28 What's your magic, because once you've got that, that then becomes the beacon. That's the light that shines through the lens of the customer avatar, so that when you're creating content, when you're creating ads, it really becomes a powerful beacon, attracting that avatar strongly. And you're not scratching your head thinking about what can I do to persuade people? But you're thinking, what can I do to express truth in order that the right person sees that understands it? And comes to me for the reasons I really want, rather than just trick them into it? That makes sense. Yeah, perfect sense. And, and also, it's like, 17:07 to me, there is a, on a science of doing this, because you can you can do marketing, completely wrong. And I know from experience, completely wrong, spend all kinds of money and get absolutely nothing out of it. I mean, there is an actual, I don't wanna say science to it, but there is a true method that actually works. And 17:29 this is, so this is one of the areas that I know as solopreneurs, or as small businesses, we always have to kind of wear many hats. But to me for the dollar, this is one of those areas that I just can't, I'm not the most effective person to do any of my marketing. I don't know the tricks. I don't know what, because there's a lot of 17:52 mine thing, there's, there's a lot of ways to get, and I'm not by tricking someone not absolutely not. But there's a better method than what I've been using to present, how I can help somebody. And getting someone that knows what they're doing is much more effective than I spent so much money in the past. Because I didn't know, I didn't know what to do. So I was just, you know, willy nilly. But part of my philosophy is I really want my customers, my clients to take ownership of the process and really understand it. So the way I'm usually engaging with people is hybrid, coaching and technical support. 18:37 And I think that's really what needs to happen, because there's as much personal development needs to happen as technical development, and things like that. But I think to bring it back to your point about spinning the wheels, and it often doesn't work is because a lot of people think digital marketing, and they don't think sales. And a good way of looking at it is if you can imagine, marketing is all about sowing, sowing the seeds, it's about cultivating the harvest. It's about nurturing. 19:10 But sales is about the harvest sales is about reaping the crops. And the mistake a lot of people make is they saw an amazing crop, they nurture that crop, but then it withers in the field because nobody went out to harvest. That's me. 19:26 Man, I had some great crops going and I just did 19:29 this. 19:31 This is huge. And this is normal. And for me, it's something that I really zeroed in on in the last few months because I've been thinking digital marketing is great. But all I'm doing is teaching people to spin the wheels faster. 19:49 And I look at all the people you probably look on your listeners look at and they talk about seven figure launches and 19:58 you're sitting there thinking 20:00 But what am I doing wrong. 20:02 And it's a very simple equation that we all forget about. And it's that success online and in any business is a very simple formula is traffic or audience. Plus conversion equals money. Plus retention equals growth. 20:21 It's really simple. 20:23 But people don't follow the rules. They, they focus on traffic, or they focus on conversion, or they focus on growth. If you actually focus on that whole simple equation, you will have an amazing business, you need to keep everything moving in parallel. So a great example is 20:43 if you'd met me three years ago, I run an agency. And everything I did was entirely bespoke. 20:50 So if you can imagine, I do all the things, we see the online influencers doing I, I run a podcast, I build an audience, I have a Facebook group. But I've got nothing on the shelf, somebody can come along and point out and go, you know what, Bob, I want that one? Oh, no, sorry, we have to have a big consultative process here big discovery. On I've only got 50 bucks to send spell spend off. 21:13 The big mistake there is the conversion points aren't available for people, there's nothing been productized to the extent where I can convert. 21:22 So this is why rolling right back to the product. And thinking What does my product range look like? And is my product range aligned with the audience that I've building in the needs that they have? Because a lot of the time it isn't? 21:37 Again, if you never make an offer, you're not going to sell anything? 21:43 So not? Yeah, and I think that's, I see that time and time again, where people have they have good products, they have things, but a lot of people they're afraid to ask for a sale. I mean, when I'm working with people that you know, on the coaching side, you know, obviously not in marketing, but just on coaching for you know, for their their companies or their businesses. A lot of people have, they still have a hang up of asking for a sale. And if you're not, it's always No, if you never ask, it's always a no. 22:16 Again, I think this comes back to the whole mindset thing. Again, this isn't about technology, this isn't about strategy, this is about confidence, betting on yourself, if you don't believe in your, in your own values sufficiently, that you're willing to bet on yourself and say, You know what, I have value, and I think you'd benefit from it. 22:37 For me, that's about mission, that's not marketing, that's not business that's I exist to deliver value in this way. 22:45 And I, if you, if you can benefit from it, then I would love you to have it. 22:51 And if you can pay for it amazing. Here's a product, if you don't consume my content, that's all free. That's my mission to write. And you mentioned, you know, the the confidence and to me, I can, when I go to meet someone, or I'm working with someone, or I see someone online, you can tell by just the vibration of how they act, how they talk, how they set up on their vibration, and how much they believe in what they and what they do. And you can without any words ever being spoken. It's like if, you know, here in the US, we've got, you know, obviously football, you can watch someone go out on the field, a kicker go out on the field. And before he even kicks, I can say he's gonna miss it, or going for a free throw in basketball, he's gonna miss it, you can just tell by their out of their body language, that the vibration that they're in that they're, they're not going to make it. And if 23:49 that does tie back to to branding, if you are not 100% sure that your product is going to solve a problem. I think you will have that same. You know, people can see it, people can feel it. 24:04 I agree. And I think 24:09 it's an odd segue for me to make, I think, but a lot of the time. 24:15 It's how that player was nurtured, that really makes the difference. And 24:23 how that person has had their confidence reinforced over time. A lot of the time, it's not ability. 24:30 It really is that that person's had their confidence built over time. 24:35 It's personal development. Yeah. And that comes through spending time with other people on the same journey, a great team. And that, for me has been something that I'd underestimated a lot for the last 24:50 decade that I've taught business owners are sort of independent, they are self assured. You can find information 25:00 Books, you just need the information. 25:02 But it's when I started spending time with other people on the same journey with me. Or as me rather, spending time with other business owners. It's there's a strange magic happens. And the best way I can describe it is, you know, when you're playing a computer game, you don't get to do particular things until you've spent time engaging with particular characters, right? It's a bit like that, that you don't understand the importance of the relative relevance of the context of certain things that you see people doing online 25:35 until somebody helps you put that piece in place. 25:39 And that's really where masterminds are ridiculously important. 25:45 I would not have achieved what I've achieved over the last year without spending time very deliberately in masterminds with 25:54 some amazing people and some equally sort of, 25:58 from a business context, average people, but they brought something magical to my business. 26:07 And I know I think that probably aligns with your mission very well. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's to me, and I'm glad that you've, you've got into a mastermind, but to me, masterminds and everything. Here's the thing, everyone's calling workshops, a mastermind or everyone's calling everything a you know, a mastermind now nowadays, but if you go back to, you know, back in time, forever, people have been doing masterminds and you know, Polian Hill mentioned it and thinking Grow Rich, but the mastermind where you get, you know, two or more minds together, and you get access to what I call the mind that no two individuals or no three individuals, or however many people are in your mastermind, can come up individually, it does create that access to the mastermind to the mind. And I'm telling you like you. 26:58 I think every good idea that I've had in the past has come from some form of a mastermind. It's never been by myself at all, ever. Whether it's through friends, that we're just sitting around chit chat and come up with ideas whether it's in a true mastermind that I'm you know, I'm in masterminds as well. 27:18 Nothing, every good idea I've ever had has come in the form of a mastermind. Absolutely. And I think a good analogy that I would give because I was thinking about this earlier today is you see people doing some amazing things in their business. 27:35 And you think it's because they think differently? How do you get to the point where you can think like that? I don't know, does that resonate with you at all? Absolutely. And you have to believe your belief system, your belief. Now, that's what drives a lot of our a lot of our thoughts. But how do you change that, and this is what I've really unpacked in the last couple of weeks. 27:57 And what we're talking about there as you're sort of underlying operating system, these are the parameters upon which we operate. 28:06 And you think, well, if you're gonna run 21st century software, you can't do that on a 1975 operating system, you're gonna need to upgrade the operating system to run the newest ideas. And that's what a mastermind allows you to do it upgrade path is triggered. And your ideas and your mindset and your worldview begin to change, and you can start running these new ideas. 28:30 Yeah, and it's, you know, it's, you know, part of the way it does it is, you know, I hate when people say, you know, fake it until you make it, because you really don't, there's no such thing as faking it till you make it. But there's things as act as if you already, you know, earn it. act as if you already are there to act as if you already have what you're wanting act as if you already have the company act as if you know, that will start changing on a subconscious level kind of your belief system, even though you don't really see it, it actually actually does. And that's, to me, that's even what a mastermind does is it I believe in. So the people that I'm in masterminds with I believe in them way more than they believe in themselves. And vice versa. They believe in me way more than I believe in myself. It's you know, it's 29:16 and that brings it back to the football player, because when other people believe in you, suddenly things are possible, which weren't before. 29:24 But I think I want to bring it back, if I may, to your question of what one of the mistakes a lot of people make with her with digital marketing because I've never actually answered that question. It's just talking about lots of other things. And one thing that I find regularly really, really helps people is if you can imagine for for you and for many other people, digital marketing is a lot like a chaotic world of possible things that they could do. And you see some people telling you Facebook ads are the way to go. Other people will tell you podcast other people will say no, no, it's all about video. Anything 30:00 How am I supposed to make a decision here? And I think that's an experience a lot of people have is 30:07 analysis paralysis, they just don't know what to do. And so something that I regularly walk clients through is, okay, well, let's look at an investment portfolio. I know it's a bit weird, bear with me. 30:21 So if you sit down with an invest an investment advisor, they'll tell you, okay, you're going to need short term investments. They're a bit risky, but they can really pay off. And you can add medium term investments, you start today, you'll probably see a benefit in about six months, but the interest rates not amazing. And then you're going to need long term investments. And that's where the old song goes about compound interest. It takes a long time, but when it kicks in, it's amazing. 30:48 So our content marketing is a bit like that, we need a short term strategy. And we should be investing in a few short term, but we don't put all our eggs in one basket there. And really there we're talking about paid traffic, as Facebook ads, Google ads. And if you your budget is modest, you you need to be modest there. 31:12 And then there's traditional content marketing, this is where most people play in the medium term investment. So social media, social networking, 31:22 posting on social media, it's busy work for a lot of people, if all you do is that it feels like busy work. Because it's hamster wheel, it never ends. But it works. 31:34 You can get lucky quite quickly. But if you persist with being busy in the medium term investment, 31:41 you should see a payoff in three to six months, people will start to pay attention. 31:46 But then the long term investments that's podcast, blogging, and YouTube, very specifically, because if you do make that investment into one of those three platforms, over a period of time, you're going to start to see some significant benefit creep in. And what do you find, as an agency, as I tell people, I want you to go through the pain of looking at podcast blog, or YouTube, I get fired, and another guy comes in who just talks about ads. 32:14 So as a coach, I'm really focused on I want you to be thinking about a long term investment here. The order that you should think about them would be blog, podcast, and YouTube. 32:27 Because the blog, to be honest, is great for search engine marketing, it will create a big footprint over time. It's not necessarily unless you're amazing, they're going to help you build your personal brand, which is why I'd rather people thought about podcast, and YouTube. 32:46 Now, yeah, I think podcasts is, you know, that's one of the obviously one of the platforms that I've chose to go over. And so for me, and and hopefully for a lot of people, I don't necessarily do podcast for a sale of anything, I don't monetize my podcast. I don't I do it because, one, I absolutely love talking with people like you and learning all these amazing things. But over time, it does you build up a, a pretty large repertoire of content, just by doing, you know, blogs and podcasts. I mean, it's again, I, I do blogs, I do I do that. But as you said, that is a long term thing, you start building up, you know, over time, you start getting a lot of content there you start getting. But yeah, it's I love how you put that into short term, medium term and long term investments. See now for me that makes that makes perfect sense on how you explain that. And people can when you, when they understand the context, they can start to make sensible decisions, they can decide okay, and under understand the value of the podcast, or the blog, or the YouTube, and how that fits into everything else. But as you've identified, within a podcast, there's a magic power, which is the relationships and the credibility that you build. But when you come back to your medium term investments, you now have something to play with, which nobody else in that space does. You've got real amazing content that will make you stand out. And that's where the magic happens in the short to medium term. 34:18 And again, with YouTube, it's much the same, you've got incredible content to come back to the medium term, right? Now, do you when you when you're working with your clients, do you normally have them tried to get as much bang for the buck for their content? So in other words, if I have a piece of content that I've podcasted on what I you know, do you do then do blogs on the same thing, and then also take some of the micro content to put out on social media for short term and kind of use that 34:46 get get as much you know, value out of that content as you can or is that overload is that? 34:53 It isn't really I think you don't want to, as we say in this country over egg the pudding 35:00 So when somebody over repurpose things you can kind of tell. 35:06 But maybe that's just me because I pay attention. 35:10 I think most people would have the opposite problem where they under repurpose, I would say repurpose as much as you reasonably can, if you are producing a podcast, or you have a YouTube channel, and you're depending on people discovering you on YouTube or your podcast, you're not making best use of your content. If you are doing that, then it makes total sense to be reposting that into Facebook, or on Twitter and Instagram. 35:38 In order that you can take your content to places where people can discover it. 35:45 And be as methodical and structured about that as you can. Because 35:51 time will kill somebody that doesn't have a system, you'll know. Like anybody listening to this, who's trying to start a business time is your most precious thing. So you need to reduce as much friction as you can with systems. 36:04 which is again, if I, if I survey my audience, and I say what's your biggest challenge, it's going to be I don't have enough information, I don't have enough time, or I don't have enough money. So time is probably the number one most of the time. So that's where systems and automation can help. But don't get distracted by systems and automation, execution trumps everything. Indeed, 36:31 execution is all there really is at the end of the day, it's all it's all about execution. Now on your I want to bring up your podcast because it's a, I'm telling you if if you run a if you're selling anything, if you're running a small business and medium business, there is so much content and so much value on your podcast, the digital marketing entrepreneur show that you have to go and listen, it's like having, I'm telling you, I can get so much value just listening to, to your shows and your different the stuff that you bring up on on your show. How long have you been doing your podcast, it's just over two years. And it feels like a lot longer. If I if I look back at when I began my podcast, I was like a frightened little chicken. 37:19 And it's become other than my wife and my family. Obviously, the best thing I've ever done. 37:27 My guests are awesome. You've been on my show that the thing that I like about my podcast is I get to be super nosy on behalf of other people. So 37:40 it's really 37:43 spending time with amazing business owners and really unpacking what makes that business work. And it really addresses a lot of the questions that you've asked is when people are successful, particularly online, what made that happen, because we only a lot of the time get to see the veneer that the world sees. But we don't understand how that came to be and how it works. And does it even work? 38:12 So really, that's what my podcast is it's speaking to some very relatable, small solopreneurs. And some big names as well. And the only thing they have in common is they have to be pretty open with me about what's going on in the back office, not just what's going on in the front. Right. Yeah, and I think, you know, just from a personal side, I think, especially going through this damn pandemic, the podcast has been an absolute phenomenal thing to connect. I was like you like when I first started podcast I did, I mainly started the podcast because I was scared crapless to do anything like that, to put myself out there like that. And it was really just a challenge. But I'm telling you is one of the best things that I've ever done. from a personal standpoint. And really, from a business standpoint, it's it's opened up so many things. And it's I'm telling you being able to, you know, talk with people like you is just an absolute phenomenal thing. And that's what was so unexpected. I didn't expect that when I started my you know, when I started that thinking big podcast, I didn't. Yeah, I absolutely echo that when I started my podcast. It's because I was too scared to do YouTube. And I wanted to build my personal brand. I wanted people to know who I was. It's completely changed now. For me, it's my Ph. D program. It's where I get to 39:37 indulge my curiosity and 39:41 And along the way, I make amazing friends. I spend it's Yeah, honestly, I don't wouldn't even know where to begin telling people how awesome a podcast is. And it's not about you. Yeah, yeah. And how do so what's the best place to because I know you do. 40:00 Coaching you have your your programs, what is what is your core program that you have for people on, on what you do on the marketing? 40:09 Well, obviously the podcast is part of that. So if people want to understand what makes amazing businesses work online, it's all there available for you on the digital marketing entrepreneur. So if you want to take that deeper and you want help with implementation, then I have a membership site, amplify me dot community. 40:31 If you want to work more intimately, then I have a coaching program, which is, again, it's a hybrid mastermind and technical support product, I guess. 40:43 That's 40:45 my bet. That is absolutely amazing. Because taking what you do, and putting it in, like kind of that format, holy cow that 40:53 I can only imagine the stuff that's actually coming out of that, that group. It's awesome. And it's such a diverse group. And it's not like super high level business owners. I have somebody who does. So I have a member in her 70s. She's a color and style consultant. She's killing it. 41:13 I have existing business coaches in there. 41:16 But what they all have in common is they're starting from zero. And they really want somebody to help them take them from zero to actually achieving something. And sometimes it can take a couple of years. And that's why it's not the most expensive product in the world. 41:33 Yeah, I think Yeah, I think that's why but one, I'd love to be a fly on the wall on that mastermind that would be 41:40 that'd be amazing to see. But speaking of like that, you know, your group. 41:45 I think some of the misconceptions that people have are, those are, to me that that's like another long term investment. That's not when I joined mastermind, I am not looking to get something immediately, it is over the six month 12 month 18 month, it's a long term for me, at least for my true masterminds but, and then you also have up there, and this is for all of my listeners go I'm gonna put the links in the in the show notes and stuff, but he's got a traffic and conversion prompts. 42:16 I'm telling you, that is how they're Tell me a little bit. Tell people a little bit about that. That is great. The way that came about, and full disclosure, if you download this document, it it's effectively it's a mind map, and it looks a little bit scruffy. I'm not gonna lie. But it came about because I did a YouTube video on exactly what I was discussing earlier, which is what is success online need to make it happen, and you need traffic, and you need conversion. Those are the two elements of success online. 42:49 And a lot of people really don't know where to go to build traffic, they don't know what to look at, to influence conversion. And so I put a big Mind Map together on the left hand side, here's a whole bunch of things that you could think about in order to drive traffic. And here's a whole bunch of things that you could think about in order to convert that traffic into value for you. 43:13 So it's just a brain dump, essentially. And it's they're really just I call it prompts because I wanted to prompt ideas and new it's not a it's not a roadmap. It's not a it's a it's a guide. It's literally a dump of ideas that will hopefully stimulate some in a conversation or some action of some kind. Well, I don't know about you, but I absolutely love mind maps. I didn't know about mind maps until I don't know, I don't know, maybe two years ago, but I have the hardest time on 43:43 putting my concepts on paper, you know, putting my ideas in any type of order I get really stuck. But doing like mind maps like that have absolutely 43:55 they do they prompt you to think to think more? Yeah, I 44:00 I begin everything in a mindmap. I just I have since I was in my early 20s. Just I can't think in any other way. Yeah. So when you when I see things like that, that absolutely resonates with me because I don't know how I did it without I wish I would have known about him 44:18 years ago because yeah, they're absolutely 44:22 that's how I like you. That's how I start everything off now is with a mind map and just start building. Building prompts off each one of those and keep going. Yeah, absolutely. I think if I didn't answer your question, my main website address is amplify me dot agency. Everything is discoverable off there. And you will find me on social media at Bob gentle, everywhere you go. And everyone listening, check out the show notes. There's gonna be a lot of stuff in the show notes that we've talked about, including all the links, so just pop over to the show notes and click on the links to go see Bob and talk with Bob. But I absolutely want to thank 45:00 You so much for for being on the podcast, Bob because 45:04 it may be selfish, but I wanted you on because, yes, I want to I want to provide value to, you know, to my listeners, but I want you to. So I want to absolutely thank you because anybody listening if you want stuff in content marketing, I'm telling you, Bob is go check out his podcast and his website because he is definitely one person that you want to listen to and you want to follow. So again, thank you so, so much for being on being on the podcast. You're so generous. No, thank you very much. I've had a great time.

Today I got to talk with Megan Grant from MeganGrant.net about her formula for attracting and retaining quality clients, we also discuss some of the tricks that blogger use? I never knew bloggers were so sly. Megan is a business owner and the founder of Revenue Spark, as well as How to Blog Like a Pro. She traded in the 9-5 for entrepreneurship, building a business generating five figures a month in revenue. And now, she teaches other professionals how to do the same. So today we are thinking big about your business. Megan will be running a live, accelerated version starting Monday, January 4. The goal is to work with students to land your next client during the month of January, with me. (There's also the self-paced course.) People can either email me here (hello@megangrant.net) or book a call if they're interested in enrolling. https://calendly.com/megangrant1/15min Revenue Spark: https://megangrant.net/revenue-spark How to Blog Like a Pro: https://megangrant.net/how-to-blog-like-a-pro This is for people who want to learn how to write blogs that get more traffic and better rankings. Here are some freebies on my site: https://megangrant.net/freebies Leaders are Readers, here are some free books for you to get. Free copy of Think and Grow Rich http://bit.ly/free-think-and-grow-rich-ebook The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge https://bit.ly/tagrchallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until next week, remember to always think big Thanks for listening! It means a lot to me and to the guests. If you enjoyed listening then please do take a second to rate the show on iTunes. Every podcaster will tell you that iTunes reviews drive listeners to our shows so please let me know what you thought and make sure you subscribe using your favorite player using the links below. Episode Transcription SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, clients, blog, mindset, business, google, content, building, LinkedIn, big, growing, writing, work, students, podcast, thought, money, formula 00:00 Welcome to the thinking big podcast. Today I got the chance to talk with megan grant from Megangrant.net about her formula for attracting and retaining quality clients. We also discussed some of the tricks that bloggers use. I never knew bloggers were so sly. Megan is a business owner and the founder of revenue Spark, as well as how to blog like a pro. She traded in her nine to five for entrepreneurship, building a business and generating five figures a month in revenue. And now she's teaching other professionals how to do the same. So today, we're thinking big on your business. 00:41 I really want to welcome Megan grant to the podcast today. This has been, I've been looking forward to this one because you, you kind of go down my alley of the stuff that I'm actually very passionate about. That's mindset. And really how our mindset controls everything that we have, you know, to me, our whatever we see in the outside world is a direct mirror of our mindset. So having you on the show is actually great, because I want to pick your brain, I want you I know you're gonna add tremendous value to the people listening. Megan, Tell, tell us a little bit about yourself. Great. Well, first, thank you so much for having me on here. My background is actually in writing, I started writing professionally, in 2009, I believe. And, you know, speaking of mindset, I grew up hearing and understanding that writing as a hobby, and we tend to say that about fields that are more artistic. And so I always grew up never thinking I could really make any money from writing. 02:16 But then that, you know, thankfully changed. And after years of working on, you know, my business and my own mindset, I was able to build this into an agency. That's, you know, thankfully doing very well these days, and really take control of my workload and what I do for a living and my finances, and now I teach other professionals how to grow their own businesses. Oh, that's so in writing. So did you do like copyright stuff? I mean, is that what you what you did? Yeah. So I, what it ended up turning into with a lot of my clients was, you know, I, I'd be hired to write blogs, but then they'd be really happy with my work, which is always nice. And they'd say, Well, can you do our social media too? And I'd be like, Oh, sure. Yeah, of course. So then I learned how to do social media. And then they'd say, well, we need some email content written, can you read our emails, so it turned into this thing of, if it is written, I can write it. That is a double edged sword, because that you end up doing a million different things. But it's also why I believe that if you know how to write, you can do a lot. Now I'm on blog. So that to me, that is one of the 03:33 arts or the one of the one of the things that's still out there, that I think still has a lot of traction, I think blogs are still a fantastic way I take blogs and podcasts kind of in the same same light in the sense that I think that they're on a long term investments, their long term, 03:52 you know, long term marketing. It's not something that I'm going to, you know, do really quickly and you're not, at least I don't see a tremendous amount of immediate turnaround as far as dollars are concerned. But I see, you know, blogs being, you know, you're building up your, your content, you're building up, you're building up your tribe, you're building up people who look up to you that people that like what you have to say. And so I think that's really, blogs are still How do you see blogs going still? I mean, is it you see people doing more video logging or blogging or 04:28 they're definitely becoming more, more how I put this engaging, like multimedia people are adding in more video podcasts. They're evolving like everything in our industry. 04:42 But I don't think blogs are ever going to go away. 04:46 This type of content is timeless, and it's the gift that keeps on giving. I have blogs that I wrote for clients a couple years ago, that are still bringing them tons and tons of traffic, but you're absolutely right. 05:00 I want to highlight what you said it is a long term play, for sure. And I think that's one tricky part with a lot of professionals today. We've all kind of gotten sucked into this. We want immediate gratification, we want things to blow up and go viral overnight. And we're, we're impatient. 05:19 Not everyone, of course, but that's the trend I'm seeing, especially with social media with platforms like, you know, tick, tock and Instagram, people want to blow up overnight. And for the vast majority of us, that is just not going to be how it works. So you might as well sit down and get coffee, because it is going to take a while. Yeah, I'm not a Tiktok star. No, me. You and me both. So you mentioned that when you first started getting into writing that, you know, it was kind of a mindset thing of, you know, this is just a hobby. Where do you think that came? I mean, is that something that you grew up with that that is, 05:57 which is which is odd, because I so I was the type that I could never write. And I thought it was something that was you had to be so intelligent. And so you know, so good to be able to do you know, writing and write stuff. I was never, ever a writer by any means. But so you actually had a mindset, or at least got a mindset growing up that that really wasn't the thing to do. 06:22 Yeah, you know, it's something I've loved. I mean, I've been writing for as long as I can remember I can, I was a kid, and I was writing plays in newspapers. And I just, I always loved it. And I always, I was always a strong writer, like, I can remember even in college, my some of my professors telling me, like, why are you not writing for the newspaper? Why are you not writing for magazines, and this was always my thing. 06:48 But you know, because it was something I was very passionate about. Because it's kind of, you know, a lot of people view it as more artistic. Even though I will argue it's part art part science. 07:00 A lot of the feedback I got from, you know, some people in the family and you know, boyfriends and people like that, it's a great hobby, but you got to go out and get a real job. And I get that it's not a traditional path to take. 07:16 Thankfully, I'm very, very, very stubborn. And I eventually said to myself, I was like, This is the only thing I enjoy doing. So I'm gonna make money from it. And 07:29 I was not long after graduating from finishing college, a friend was like, Oh, you got to read this book about freelance writing. And I was like, what's that? Because the concept was still so foreign to me. Like, I knew I wanted to make money off of it. But at the time, I still had it in my head that it was going to be really, really hard, and maybe not even possible. And he read me this book, it changed everything. And yet, I can't remember the title of it. And 07:54 it opened me up to this whole world. And I thought, Oh, so there are people selling this, there are people making money from this. And I never looked back. And I just kept climbing and climbing and growing, and 08:06 trying everything. Because it's certainly not easy. 08:12 But it's possible. And I'm just I'm really glad these days that I didn't quit, because it's been very rewarding. Yeah, that's it. So I and I think that goes along with, honestly, just about everything, we all have this on a limited mindset of limiting mindset that what we do is not good enough, or it's not, it's not for us, or we're not, you know, it's I can't make money out of whatever it is. But once we once we get past that, you know, that really minimum, you know, mindset or that limiting mindset that any idea that we have any skill, I don't care what your skill is, you can absolutely make money at it. 08:54 It doesn't matter what it is. And that, why there's I see so many people that have that mindset, that it's just limited. And, you know, it's not for me, you know, I can't make that, you know, I can't do it. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough. Whatever the you know, the limiting belief is but, you know, once you realize that, any idea, any skill that we have, we can absolutely turn it into either a business or we can make money at it, or we can utilize our genius. I mean, to me that that's our genius. What we're good at is our genius, and we can absolutely make money at it. 09:29 Yeah, yeah. You're so right. And it's it really I feel like the the biggest limits we have we place on ourselves. 09:40 And it's funny, you know, sometimes my students or people who are considering enrolling, they'll be like, Oh, I want to do this, but I don't know. Like, do you think I could come on? course what do you do? Do you mean to I think you could of course you could. Then I have to remind myself like, okay, they're where I was, you know, 510 years ago, whatever it is. 10:00 They don't know yet what's possible. And once you kind of let that sink in, it's really liberating. Because you can tell yourself, okay, if I want to make $5,000 a month, I can, and I will. And you will. I told myself, I want to make 10 grand a month. And then I did. And then I said, I want to make more. And then I did. And it's like, you can do anything. And I'm always telling people this, like, you can do it. It's all about having the right process the right steps. You know, there are so many successful people out there who are doing what you're doing, and it's not luck. It's not magic. It's not a fluke. It didn't you know, it just having the right steps. And if you follow the steps you get there. Yeah. 10:46 And one of the so how, I mean, how long have you been doing your, your business now? 10:53 Well, I officially, you know, like on paper, I registered it in 2017. 10:59 But I have been building it, probably a year or two prior to that, like trying to really grow and kind of get out of being a one woman show and then building it into an agency. So I've been doing that now for about the last three, three to four years. 11:15 And it's a constant learning process, you've never stop. But it's, it's good. You just keep growing and getting stronger. Yeah, and I, boy, I work with a lot of solopreneurs I work with a lot of people have small companies. And the one thing that I, I see everybody doing is 11:35 they're doing everything for the company. They they're doing their writing, they're doing their copy work, they're doing their graphics, they're doing their marketing, they're doing everything there for their company, and I get it, we all have to kind of do that. When we're starting out, we're starting our companies, we have to kind of be you know, we have to do everything within within the company until we get you know, big enough to, you know, start outsourcing that out. How long did it take for you to do that? 12:06 too long. 12:09 I, I'm a workhorse I always have been. And I am really good at working hard. But what I didn't realize this is something else I stress to people the difference between working hard and working smart. And I was always against finding easier ways of doing things because I thought it made me lazy I was so like buying into the hustle culture will you have to be working, you know, 14 hours a day and hardly sleeping and you're sick and stressed I thought that was like heroic and meant that I was on the right path. And really, I was just shooting myself in the foot. 12:47 And I didn't hire my first person until I hit my breaking point, which was the wrong way to go. But lesson learned. 12:57 But then thankfully, once I did hire her, it almost became addictive because I started, you know, passing some of my work off to her. And it freed up space in my brain First of all, to stress less, but also to think about ways of growing my business that I didn't have time to think about before. And I stopped having to do so much of the day to day grunt work, because she was doing it. And I could feel a little more like a business owner, which is what I wanted. And so now 13:29 I everything I have to do first I you know, get a grasp of it myself, so I can train someone on it. But then it's okay, can I get this off my plate and train somebody else to do it? Yes. Okay, here you go. And if I don't have to do it, then I don't. And that allows me to focus on growth. 13:47 Right. And I think that's so for me, and for a lot of people I've talked to, I'm the type of person that, like you said, If I, if I can do it, I want to do it. And it's a sense of, you know, I'm not going to pay someone $100 if I can do it, it might take me three hours. And that's worth a lot more than $100. But my mind, there's something in my mind that says, If I can do it, I'm not going to outsource it. And that was one of the biggest things that I had to get over was I'm not sure if it's a control thing if it's a 14:24 limiting mindset on money thing. I don't know what it was at the time. But it was it was to the point where I had to give up on doing some of the stuff that I couldn't because I did the technology stuff I did virtually everything my first company I built it was a technology company and I did virtually everything for that for a long time and it I'm telling you it about killed me doing all that stuff. And we have to again I What do you see when you're working with your clients? Do you see it as kind of a mindset thing a stubborn thing a god I'm trying to look back and think back when I was you know, doing everything in 15:01 I don't know why I had to do everything, but I did. 15:05 Well, I'm sure it's, you know, for everyone, it's a different experience. But I do think part of it's this mentality of, well, no one could do it as good as I can. And 15:20 that might be the case right now. But you are as good as you are at your tasks at your responsibilities, because you practice them, you didn't wake up being fantastic. So really, the what I tell myself now is that it's just a matter of allowing somebody else that same opportunity to become really, really good at it. And they might not do it in the exact same way. But your way isn't the only right way. So, and it really like, what I tell people is, if you want to keep growing, you will have to outsource, you don't have to, but then get get comfortable with where you advocate where you're at, because you're probably not going to grow a whole lot more like there are only so many hours in the day. 16:06 But that was certainly that was the case for me. I was okay, spending the money. You know, my business was doing very well. And it was just me. But I was terrified of letting go. Because my clients were so used to me, right? They were used to my work and my words. And I thought, well, no one could ever mimic that. And then I thought, well, Megan get real. Yeah, they could. They do. Like, it's just a matter of finding the right person, training them, keeping you know, the line of communication open, if they help, they need feedback, and also giving them room to be creative. Because, you know, the I've got one person on my very small team, a team of me and one other person right now. And 16:48 I give her so much freedom now. We've been working together for over a year. And 16:54 she's great. She's fine. She's just fine. Everything is great. So if I hadn't let go a little bit, I never would have gotten here. Yeah. And that's it. Boy, I tell you that that is something. I see it throughout many different things, not just in business, but people just don't want to get out of their own way sometimes. And they they do they think their ways, either the only way or the best way. And it's truly not. There's so many ways to get stuff done that we don't you know, we don't even really look at at all. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone knows something. You don't? Yeah. 17:33 That's, that's a hard thing to learn sometimes, too. It is, it is. And it's not even something we do to be like, you know, arrogant or malicious, I think we just don't realize it. And it's taught me I think, to be a better listener and to pay more attention and be more open minded. Everyone knows something. I don't. 17:54 Yeah, that's, uh, and to me from a just from a development standpoint, that is a great place to be. Because the second we think we know everything, it's the second we stop learning, it's the second we stop, you know, growing, we always have to have that. I like to call it like a child mindset of, you know, always always learning and 18:15 trying to know what other people know. That's one of the reasons why I absolutely love doing a podcast is I get to talk with so many people like you that do things that you know, some of the stuff I do, but it's it's in different ways. And it's just, it's so, so enlightening to talk to people about the ways that that they do things and the way that they they operate. 18:36 Yeah, good for your brain. It's good. It kind of expands your horizons a little bit. Yeah. Now some of the kind of like you're working with your clients and stuff. What are some of the biggest challenges or the biggest mistakes that you're seeing in 18:50 people right now in their business and what they're doing? 18:54 To clarify, are we talking about my clients with my agency or my students? clients with science to Yeah, okay, my agency? Oh, yeah, got it. Now, just checking. 19:05 One of one of the big ones is and it's so ironic when you think about it, um, I've had a lot of amazing clients who are very resistant to change. And, you know, a this industry changes sometimes by the day, so we have to be adaptable. 19:25 But it's funny because they hire me because what they're doing isn't working, then they don't want to change what they're doing. And so sometimes I will just have to, you know, like, if we're on a zoom call, or whatever, I just have to point blank say, what you're doing isn't working. So why do you want me to continue that? And it is, it is a struggle, like I have had to really, really, really, you know, push some clients and have these conversations with them. And I think it's just that maybe a matter of like, they're scared of stepping outside their comfort zone. So even though they know what 20:00 They're doing isn't working. It's what they know. And it's predictable. They know it's not work. But like you could save your money, don't hire me save your money, keep doing it and just continue not working. 20:12 Yes, it's so doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Now and you're now in your students? What? What, who is your I'm curious who is your ideal student who who is coming to you for, for your coursework and for your trainings. 20:30 Really, the beauty of it is that it, it works for most client based businesses, um, everyone will be different. So that's why I always get on a call with people first before I'll enroll them, because 20:44 I have to be really confident that this will work for them. You know, I want to keep the success rate up. But you know, I get a lot of freelancers, a lot of people who are still a one person show, and some of them come to me with absolutely nothing. Some come to me with a business that has plateaued, but it's a lot of freelancers, writers, PPC experts, social media people. 21:09 I've got an accountant. I've got, what else who else is in there? graphic design, web development. So any professional that needs clients to keep their business going? 21:21 The odds are, this will apply to them. So tell me about your about your course and stuff a little bit. That's it? Because to me, that is absolutely 21:31 amazing needed thing. People don't necessarily know how, how to do that. What is what are some of the biggest challenges that they have actually doing it? 21:41 Well, you know what, I say that there are two pieces to being a successful business owner. One is providing a really good service. And the other is sales. And you know, sales, brings people in the door, but you keep them there by being really good at what you do. So I get people that are really good at what they do. And they're still struggling. And they'll say, I'm not making money. I don't know why I'm not making money. And I'll say okay, well, how are you generating leads? And they go What? And I say, Well, how do you do outreach? They go What? So what's your client acquisition process? Hmm. And they're their eyes glaze over. And I'm like, okay, there's your problem. So what I do with them is, you know, my approach is very, very holistic. So, you know, appropriately enough, the first module in the course, is mindset, because a lot of people come to me with these very, very toxic self limiting beliefs. And I tell them, you got to work on those, or else, none of this is gonna work. Right? So we start there. And it's funny, a lot of people kind of, I've seen a few eye rolls when they when they enroll in the course, and I'm like, What is this? Why are we talking about mindset? And without fail every time they finish that lesson, and they're like, oh, okay, they get it. Now I get it. Now I get it. Yeah. Yeah, that and what's funny is working with 23:05 some of my clients, some of the biggest things that I see the biggest, 23:10 I won't say errors, but the biggest, you know, challenges I see is, I have a lot of people that do a lot of great things, and they'll do your marketing, they'll you know, get the lead, but they don't know how to ask for the sale. 23:22 And that's the biggest I see a huge I had that for a long time is I didn't know how to actually, you know, I'd get them into funnels, I would do various things. But I couldn't ask for that. I didn't know how to ask for the sale. And that was that was one of my biggest challenges. 23:40 Yeah, it's tricky. And it's, I think that's one of the hardest parts about landing clients. There are a number of variables and moving parts, you know, you just mentioned like, if you put them in a funnel, okay, that's one moving part. It's one moving part consisting of even smaller parts within it. And it there's no magic trick to it, but it's incredibly difficult, lining up all the pieces in the right order, and putting it all together. That's why I tell people you know, like, with the way I teach it, it's a very holistic, laser focused approach. And I'll often see people who have some of the parts, like they know they're onto something and they know that they're almost there, but something's not working. And it's just because there are so many pieces to it. And if you have you know, one but you don't have the others or you have almost all of them, but not quite then it's probably not gonna work. That's really hard. Yeah, and it's And so, when I was looking at your stuff, and when I was going through, some is up, it actually is a 24:47 formula a process a I call them standard operating procedures on how you do your thing and I think that's like I know you have you know, you do coaching, definitely want to talk about some of that coaching that you have come 25:00 up, but you also have evergreen evergreen courses up there. And it looked like the 25:07 you really do, it looks like you're, you're teaching a very good formula for it attracting for getting and for, you know, for keeping your clients. 25:20 Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, it's, um, I do so the Well, I've got I've got two programs. One is to help people write better blogs. But then there's my my client Acquisition Program. And that's also self paced. But it's, it's so much more than I didn't want it to be like, okay, you're enrolled, here you go, good luck. 25:44 You know, I take a very hands on approach to it. We have a Facebook group, that's for students only. And we do live zoom calls. And I always tell people, like you are never in this alone. And there are already people who have made this work many times, and that should bring you comfort. 26:03 And it's, it's like you said, it literally is a formula, I wanted people to be able to follow this step by step, check all the boxes and get consistent results. And, you know, take out the guesswork take out the trial and error. I mean, of course, there's always going to be a little bit of that to an extent. But, you know, generally the same concepts, the same steps are going to apply to everyone. 26:28 Yeah, I, anybody that can come up with a formula or for standard operating procedure to do something, to me that that is, to me, that's the only way to go. One of my mentors, God, at years ago, told me a story about, you know, if you had to go through a, you know, a minefield, where the bombs were planted, you know, the landmines were planted, and you want to get across safely, how would you do it? And I was like, I don't know, I'd run real fast. I would, is like, No, you take you find someone who actually did it. And you take every step, identical to the step that they take, and you're going to be successful. And that, that kind of drilled it into me is like, we have to find people, if there's something that we want, if we can find someone that has done it. And that's successful. I can turn months of my own learning into literally days or weeks. Because I'm following someone else's procedure that they've actually or their process, their, you know, their their formula, of how they did it exactly how they did it. And I don't care who goes through if you have a success formula, I don't care who goes through the formula and who does it. It's gonna work every time. And that's, yeah, so so going out and finding people that are specialized in what they do is, for me is very critical for business owners and business people is to go out and find these people who are like yourself that have been there done this, this is your specialty. This is where you've specialized and you've got a process. Why would I want to go spend months of my own time, although I always 28:10 do that stuff. But why why would Why do we want to go and, you know, spend all this time when we can work with someone that's already been there, already done that saved me a lot of money save me a lot of times, they made a lot of headaches. 28:25 I just yeah, you give me on a roll with the with standard procedures. 28:30 I need. That's why it's so important. Because you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can, there are people out there who want you to copy their process. And I always tell people, if you do the work, it works. And one of my one of my star students, his name is bright. 28:49 And I always tell him, you light up the room, you're bright. And he has had incredible results. And sometimes, you know, stupid people who are considering enrolling, they'll say, Can I talk to a student? And I'll be like, sure, and I'll send them you know, too bright, or to someone else and bright told one of them. 29:09 If you follow this to a tee, do exactly what she says it works, and it will continue working. And I tell my students, if you come to me, which thankfully it is that hasn't happened yet, but I tell them, if you come to me and say it's not working. 29:26 I always tell my students, I teach them how to track all their work, track their progress, track their metrics, I'm going to ask for all of that. And if I start finding gaps, I'm going to send you back and tell you to go to to pick up the right way. Like I said, it's I haven't run into that yet. But the point is, if you do it, it works. And you brought up something that Oh, the 29:51 we need to do it as much as we can, but we always have to look back and reflect on how we've done what we've done and how 30:00 What book was it? I 30:02 think it was a psycho cybernetics by Maxwell maltz. And that's kind of what I mean, it's a cybernetic. It's a cybernetic application where you, you do something you evaluate, you change, you do again, you evaluate, you make any changes, you do it again. And most of the time, a lot of a lot of us, we don't go back and evaluate 30:25 or measure our progress. And if we to be if you don't, if you track something, you pay attention to it, you know, where you put your mind and when you know where you focus your your energy goes. And without having those measurements in place, then, yeah, we just keep spinning our wheels, at least I do. You know, I have to have that stuff in place. 30:45 So well, you're you're right, though, like it's and you actually you kind of mentioned said this in a different way earlier, you said you have to have like a, like a childlike mentality. We're talking about exploring and trying new things. I think that's what it comes down to here. You need to be a little bit of a detective, a little bit of a scientist or researcher, and you can't do those things if you're not tracking your progress. I mean, how can you know if what you're doing is working if you're not monitoring it, and that was another another limiting belief, I had to get over it. Because for as long as I can remember, I've always said I'm not a numbers person. I'm a words person. I'm a writer. And I've always said like, I'm terrible at math. I'm bad with numbers. I had to get over that real quick. 31:35 Especially as a business owner, yes. Yep. There's no way around that. 31:40 Now also up on your site, and that one of the things that intrigues me is you also have a thing for blogs on blogging like a pro. What are what are some of the best tips for because I, I do a half assed blog. And 31:57 and like anything, if you do half ass, it just doesn't, doesn't work that well. What are some of the best tips for like doing a blog? What do you look in? When you go to a blog? What are the first few things you look at and go, Ah, this guy's an amateur. 32:13 I would say the biggest is people who are writing entirely for the algorithm and not for the reader. 32:21 And SEO, Search Engine Optimization, keyword research, topic, research, all of those things are still really important. I teach them in the course, because they're important. But what Google cares about most these days, you can't get away with keyword stuffing anymore used to used to work, it doesn't anymore, and you're not going to outsmart Google, you're not going to trick Google. 32:45 And besides, what Google cares about most is user experience. They want the reader of your blog, to have the best experience possible. So really, what you should care about most is the reader, not Google. If you make the reader happy, as a byproduct, you will make Google happy. And you'll rank well. So and I think that's the biggest thing. Like, sometimes I'm surprised it's still happening to the degree it is I'll you know, be onboarding a client. And I'll look at their blog, and it's just keyword after keyword after keyword, you know, a million links, and they just went overboard with the SEO backfires not like you know, so you just like, are speaking a foreign language me? What do you mean by Sorry? No, no, no, that's fantastic. But But what do you mean by like, what do you say when you go in there? And you see, like, oh, they've got all these, you know, words in here that what does that look like? I mean, what is that? 33:42 As an example, and I'm, this is 100% made up. But I've seen variations of this a million times. I'm based in Las Vegas. And if I've got a client who is a lawyer, which I don't work with lawyers, so that's why this is made up. This is what people do. They know that they want to rank for the keyword lawyers in Las Vegas, so that if someone goes on Google and searches in lawyers in Las Vegas, they'll show up on page one. So what they then do is write a 500 word blog, and cram the keyword lawyers in Las Vegas in it 200 types. And, and it's it's it's spammy, and it doesn't work. And furthermore, it hurts your performance. You don't want to do that. Wow, begin the reader is going to be reading that it's going to sound very forced and mechanical and spammy. They're going to have a bad experience. So Google won't be happy. 34:39 See, now that's that's so far out of my paygrade I just don't 34:45 see now that stuff. Oh, that's so I didn't even know that was a thing. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's an older tactic because back Back in the day, whenever I don't even know exactly when that was how many years ago doing that. 35:00 kinds of things did work. You could rank high in Google by keyword stuffing. But Google caught on to it and is way too savvy for that. So really, you know, like I said, keywords are still important. But you really just need to write good content, write stuff that people want to read. So how does for instance, how does a Google say, yeah, that was a good experience, by time on a page by 35:28 clicks. But also time spent on a page, it doesn't matter. If you're getting tons and tons of clicks, but people aren't hanging out to read. That's actually a bad thing. That's why you shouldn't only be looking at clicks, we were talking a moment ago about monitoring your progress and your metrics. 35:48 If people are clicking on your content, but not sticking around to read it, that's a red flag, because Google is going to look at that and go, Oh, they're landing on a page, but they're not sticking around. So clearly, they don't like what they're seeing. And it will penalize you for that. So you want people to hang out and read, and you want to keep their attention and keep them scrolling. And if you can, you know, get them to click on another page on your site, and poke around a little even better. Wow, see, I didn't even that. See. That's why I need to take your course on blog like a pro. 36:23 I just have no idea that those are even even things. I'm just happy if I can get like, right two pages of stuff, then I'm golden. 36:32 Work. 36:34 Oh, but yeah, so I'm starting to try to. So do you see a lot of stuff in like repurposing content. So for instance, if like this blog, or this podcast, if I go in, and let's say turn parts of the content into a blog, and you because I'm the type that I'm, I'm very lazy. And if I can, if I can repurpose something and get more use out of it. But then again, that might be one of the Google filters. And they say, this guy's lazy, and he's trying to cross, you know, cross contaminate all these, you know, a blog and a podcast and, you know, micro content. And does it look 37:15 like is your site as a whole? Or is it just kind of 37:18 independent? 37:20 Yeah, you can't see me, but I'm shaking my head right now. In this case, your laziness will pay off. Because awesome, and this is 37:30 really exciting. You don't have to do more work. 37:33 What's really you should absolutely be repurposing content. And this is something else. I sometimes not too often, but sometimes I struggle with with my clients. 37:44 They'll pay me to write a blog. I'll write it, they post it on Facebook once and they're like, Okay, give us new content. And I'll say, okay, but what about this blog? And they go, Oh, no, no, we already posted that. People don't want to see that again. And I tell them, Okay, first of all, you're gonna reach new people, the more you post it, so we'll post it again in a couple of months. But turn it into a YouTube video, turn it into social media graphics, take quotes, put post the quotes online, if it's a podcast, take snippets of it and post it as a teaser, transcribe it and turn it into a blog or summarize it and turn it into a blog, and so on, and so on. You should get as much out of every piece of content as you can, especially with content that's more lengthy or long form, like a podcast or a blog, or a video. See, I knew there was genius in my laziness. 38:38 I knew deep down somewhere, that there was a reason for 38:44 Oh, no, we're laughing, but it's true. And one of the one of the best things I learned from actually my ex, um, he was always finding shortcuts. And I'd be like, you're so lazy. And he'd go, Yeah, but what you spent two hours doing I got done in 10 minutes. I'm like, Okay, well, it's hard to argue that 39:04 there's genius in that. Yeah, that's what I say when I want to find someone to come up with like an operating procedure or something, a procedure, I'm going to hire the laziest person that I could possibly find. Because I can guarantee that the process they come up with will be the most efficient, less time process than anybody that's, that that's where I come in. That's, that's where I come in. So, so true, that and that so that that is great. You know, for anybody listening that if we have content, repurpose it, I know that I've been trying to do that I need to get better at it. But man that's seeing there's there's things like this that most of us don't even realize we don't know the ins and outs. We don't know what things are looking at its algorithm here algorithm. We don't know any of that. Yeah, it's a lot. There's a lot to learn, but um, 40:00 You know, he's just looking at it like this, you spend a lot of time and energy creating this amazing piece of content, whatever it is podcasts blog video, why would you want to just post it once and be done with it? You worked so hard for it content can continue driving traffic to your site, and reaching new audiences. So leverage that and just keep, you know, hammering it, putting it in front of people in different forms. And you can take one piece of content and turn it into 50 pieces of content. 40:32 That is, and that's, that's all 100% for that. Now, do you do you see people like, for instance, if I wanted to get traffic from a blog, what would what would prevent me from going and just taking blogs from other people did I would think Google could say, hold on this exact same content was posted 40:53 over here 40:56 and not drive traffic to it? 40:59 Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a it's called duplicate content. And that will absolutely come back to bite you. And, you know, whenever you do stuff like that, we call it blackhat. techniques, blackhat, SEO, any like shady practices. It's like I was saying a few minutes ago, you're not going to trick Google. 41:20 So when you do stuff like that, it will see it, it'll catch you maybe not right away. Or the person you stole it from will catch you. I actually I used to write for bustle. It's like an online feminist magazine. And people stole my content all the time. I'm glad I didn't know what you were talking about when you said that then. 41:42 Because Oh, you mean, the name of the magazine? Or the thing? You're right. I'm like, a feminist. It's like, I'm glad I didn't know what it would have been weird if I would have known what that was. 41:52 Oh, yeah, I don't know. It's a 41:55 big, they have a huge audience. And 42:00 which is really, you know, great opportunity for a writer. But it also means that they're targeted a lot. And you know, they have the legal resources, they can send a cease and desist or whatever. But, um, I would actually get, like, they're called pingbacks, I would basically get an email. And I would be alerted when people would copy paste my content. And I would go and contact them and be like, You stole my content from start to finish. And it doesn't work. 42:34 Wow. Wow. So how so? You know, it's, it's the beginning of December right now. We've had a hellacious year, a year like northern how has 2020 been for you from a business standpoint, and also a personal standpoint, I'm very interested in how people are getting through this whole pandemic crap. And I've know people who have done apps, their businesses have grown 500% 43:02 I'm not every which way, but to me, and I can tell by your stuff that you've continued to learn, you've continued to push and I think that's what we all need to do. During this, you know, however long it lasts, I think we're gonna be I think 2021 will be much better than 2020. 43:21 Yeah, me too. 43:23 So I, you know, like a lot of people, my business took a hit. It was mid March. And I, I, I say last, I mean, I had about 65% of my clients go on hold. And it happened in a week. 43:42 And I'm not gonna lie, I was stressed out like I was, you know, I was, I was always fine financially. And I was going to be okay, either way. But it was more of this defeat, like, like, even now, it makes me sad. I work so hard. I work so hard, like a lot of people. And in a week, most of it was gone. And I was devastated. And I just like, cried and cried, and then I drank and then I was crushed. And then I thought, Okay, I'm going to let myself kind of be upset. And then you move on, because the world doesn't stop turning. So, um, I came back at it the next week, and I thought, Okay, this sucks. What do I do? And I thought I do what I did in the past. I pin it. And, you know, this wasn't the first time I ran into a big problem like this. In fact, the motivation for starting my business in the first place was that I got laid off. 44:46 So okay, all right, motivator. 44:50 Well, you know, it's like it is that was actually the fourth time I had been laid off. And that's when I was like, Okay, I'm done. I'm done with this. 44:58 But you know, we look 45:00 Look at it. And this doesn't this isn't to say that it's, it's easy. But at the end of the day, you have two choices. You can sit there and just, 45:10 you know, cry about it, or you can, you know, keep crying if you want to move on, pick up the pieces and find a way around it. And that's what I did. And, 45:19 you know, sure enough, a bunch of clients came back, I picked up a bunch of new clients, the course grew more students, and then I just keep pushing. 45:30 Yeah, the alternative, isn't that attractive of an option? No, it's not. And, and that's the thing. I I so from all the clients I've talked to in the people I've talked to one of the best things I think that's come out of this whole thing is people have become genius in the fact that their imagination, they've used people who haven't had to use their imagination are now having to think how the hell am I gonna get through this. And there's some amazing stuff that's that's come out this year, there's some amazing things that have been developed through 2020. 46:05 Because of because of what happened, and I think that I think it's gonna be one of the biggest upticks that we see is all the amazing stuff, you know, stuff coming out. And it's, again, I think 2021 is gonna be much better. Now, I know, you have your, you know, your evergreen courses up there, we were talking a little bit earlier, you have a live course, coming out in January. And I do the same thing. So I have, you know, I'll do a live course, and, or a live event, whatever it is, and then I will take recordings, and I'll have kind of an evergreen, you know, product up there. But there's nothing like being on the live side. And I've done the same with with, you know, people that you know, my mentors and stuff that I've taken their life stuff, I've taken their record stuff. All that was great, but there's nothing like being in a live meaning real time environment, whether I'm sure your this one coming up in January, I would assume is going to be like via zoom or some remote, remote technology. What how, How's this? What's this? What's this live course going to be? 47:13 So it's what I'm doing is I'm taking my whole process for landing clients. And as you said, I'm going to be teaching it live over zoom. But I'm also another little twist I'm adding is I'm going to do it in a month. And that means that it's going to be a little accelerated. But my reason for doing this was, because 2020 was so awful for so many people. And you know, yes, I have the the self paced evergreen course that that's always there. But I thought I want to do something different, I want to do something else. And I thought I'm gonna do it alive. Again, I've done this once before, when I first launched this course, I did it with a small group of professionals live. And it's a lot of work for me. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm not doing this again anytime soon. But you know, I was a little while ago. And you're right, like, it's a totally different experience. So bringing it back in January, it's going to be accelerated. And the goal is for people to land their, their next client in January with me, and you know, kind of holding their hand and walking them through it, and setting them up to have a really good year. And beyond, but it's about starting 2021 off on a brighter note. Yeah, and success builds success and just getting some of those early successes. God that's huge for so many people to do. And that's so that's fantastic. And for the people listening, this podcast should come out, right, right towards the beginning, I'd say a week or so before before this class starts. And Megan's so I'm going to make sure that those listening, go to the show notes. After you're done listening, and I'm gonna have all the links, I will have the link to the to the live course as well, obviously to your website, and, and everything is will be in the show notes as well. But I want to make sure that people can quickly get to get to the course of the live course because again, I think live courses are I get 30% more out of a live course just because one I think that there's more ownership or responsibility. So I take more responsibility. People are watching it's live you know, it's like yeah, so I always I maybe that's why I get so much more out of live is you know, I've got some accountability, kind of a built in accountability partner when when I do a live Yeah, accountability is huge. And that's something else I've been telling people. You know, if they enroll and they go through the self paced program, some people are totally fine on their own. Some aren't. And I get it, it can be really hard to stay motivated when it's just you but in this life course. 50:00 I'm going to be on your behind every week. And there's more homework and there's check ins. And so that's why it's for people who are ready to hit the ground running late. Let's go. Let's do it. 50:12 That's great. I can't wait to see how, see how that turns out. Now, I was up on your website, I also noticed that you have what First, I want to get your thoughts from a business standpoint. How big do you think LinkedIn is still? I mean, is that still a big platform for for business? Is it? How does that kind of rank in the in, you know, kind of the social media, stuff that's out there? I think it's huge. I think it's great. I know, LinkedIn, sometimes people give LinkedIn a hard time because it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that, you know, Facebook, or Instagram might. But if you use it the right way, it can be invaluable. And, you know, one thing I do want to say, though, is that whenever when it comes to connecting with people online, whether it's LinkedIn, or Instagram, or wherever, you have to be willing to have conversations, to talk to people to nurture relationships. But where LinkedIn has a leg up, I feel like is that it's not totally a social media platform. And it's not 100% business, it is this perfect spot in the middle. So you're in the perfect place to form like semi casual connections with people. And also talk business. 51:33 Yeah, I think the perfect blend. Yeah, and that's that, what you said is a great concept, it's it truly is more about, and this is on any business, it's more about making a connection, not a sale, especially on social media platforms, you're not there to make an immediate sale, you're there to make a connection and make a, you know, make a friend make a you know, make an acquaintance actually get to know know people. Yeah, definitely. And it's a, I know, it kind of goes against that whole instant gratification that we all kind of struggle with. 52:06 But there's really, really something to be said for building relationships, building authentic relationships. And, you know, one of the biggest mindset shifts for me and for my students has been look at it as helping not selling, if you reach out to people and try to form relationships, and all you're doing is just trying to like hammer them with the sale, because you want the money. It's not going to work. No, if you approach it from they have a problem, I have the solution, you will do so much better. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I'm, I'm gonna take 52:43 the notes, but I'm going to take the action where I'm going to go up and get your LinkedIn, because that's one of the places that I don't engage as much as I should. I'm going to go up and I'm going to take your I'm going to get your LinkedIn profile, how to optimize your LinkedIn profile. I'm going to take that, and I'm actually gonna, so that's one of my takeaways from this is to go in, optimize my LinkedIn profile, and start using that a little bit more as well. 53:11 Yeah, definitely, we should. I don't know if we did already connect on LinkedIn. And, you know, let me know when you've had a chance to go through it. And I would love to read through it and see the changes that you made. And, you know, let me know what what kind of progress you've made. It's really powerful. And, you know, LinkedIn, it's a it's a search engine, not to the, to the extent that Google is, but it is people use it as a search engine. So you got to keep that in mind. Yeah, I think LinkedIn is absolutely powerful. I just haven't spent the time there. And I need to so that's why I'm glad that you have that up there. Because I'm definitely gonna, I'm definitely going to utilize that. 53:48 Yeah, you'll when you start seeing the results, you'll become a little obsessed with it. I used to hate LinkedIn I got this thing is so dull, it's so ugly. Now. I'm obsessed with it, because it works. I'll definitely have to check that out. And again, Megan, I want to thank you for for being on the on the show. And being on the podcast. This I'm telling you this all this information is absolutely fantastic. I can't wait to go back and actually read Listen to this. So I can pick out much more of the of the content that you have. And everyone listening, go go to the show notes, go to you know, go to the website. There's great stuff up there. You've got obviously blog stuff you've got, I was looking through your blogs, you've got great blogs, and great information out there. So it was absolutely and it's mega grant dotnet. And again, they're going to be in the show notes as well. So you can just go to the show notes and click, click on it and go go over there. But again, Megan, thank you so much for spending the time and enlightening all of my listeners on some of the ins and outs especially if I could blog I had no idea. 54:55 Thank you. I really enjoyed this and I love the information that you're using. 55:00 you're sharing with your listeners. It's it's the kind of stuff that I feel like I wish more people, you know, covered this kind of information mindset and business and growth. So you're doing a great thing and thank you for having me on here. Oh, thank you so much.

Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. You are in for such a treat today with my special guest Sandra Haseley. Sandra is one of the founders of Generation Impact, a group that exists to help you refine, develop, launch, scale, and MASTER your business to create the impact and life you desire. Sandra is one of the select few keynote speakers for Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi in their Knowledge Broker Blueprint program, and she is currently helping to build and head train their workshops for new entrepreneurs launching their businesses. One of my key takeaways from this episode is that every single one of us has a gift that we can build a business around, she even said I could use fluency in sarcasm as a platform… who would have known. Today we are thinking big into your passions and your Impact on the world. Generation Impact: Generationimpactgroup.com Connect With Sandra Haseley on Social Media Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/SandraHaseleyCO Facebook Business Page: https://www.facebook.com/SANDRAHASELEYANDCO Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesandrahaseleyco/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandrahaseley/ Email: heyboss@sandrahaseley.com Website: https://www.sandrahaseley.com Leaders are Readers, here are some free books for you to get. Free copy of Think and Grow Rich http://bit.ly/free-think-and-grow-rich-ebook The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge https://bit.ly/tagrchallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until next week, remember to always think big Thanks for listening! It means a lot to me and to the guests. If you enjoyed listening then please do take a second to rate the show on iTunes. Every podcaster will tell you that iTunes reviews drive listeners to our shows so please let me know what you thought and make sure you subscribe using your favorite player using the links below. Episode Transcription SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, online, big, business, life, paid, clients, helping, steps, years, build, live, sarcasm, impact, Sandra Haseley, world, gift, degree I want to welcome Sandra to the to the podcast. And if people are listening to this right now, and they're driving, I'm just fair warning, I'm just telling you, you better pull over keep your seatbelt on, because 01:39 it's Sandra is fast and furious. And you better be paying attention when she's talking because I normally can't even write that fast. I try but but I can't do it. 01:51 So keep your seatbelts on keep your hands in the car, but pull over because you're about ready to go on a ride should tell you, I'm just being honest here. I'm still I am still catching up on notes from our last stuff that you did. So I'm still trying to get my notes down. So welcome. Welcome to the show. Tell people a little bit that your story is absolutely fascinating where you've been and how you've gone. And that's, I really like to focus in on some of that. Because I think today, I mean, you've seen that kind of the gig economy, the side economy, these people starting their own, you know, their own businesses last couple years. But I think with what's happening with COVID 02:32 it's not just on the verge anymore. I mean, it is people are having to go and kind of do their own thing. And we just don't know how we don't know, we don't know how and you and that's what you've done. I mean, you've done this your whole your whole career. So tell us a little bit about you and kind of what the mindset are kind of what drove you to to where you are now. 02:52 Sure, yeah. I mean, I I went through the traditional model, like, like a lot of people did through, you know, I got a, I got a scholarship to play division one softball, and so I went that route. And I studied engineering, finance marketing, I graduated with a finance degree and, and I went into commercial real estate into commercial mortgage brokerage, and, and then continued on into to work for a commercial real estate developer. And in that space, I was because I was the director of sales for this company, it was important to make sure that the tenants were doing well, so that they could, you know, continue to pay rent and grow into additional properties or whatever. So I from very, very early on in my career, I was not only analyzing the back end and their financials, and looking at the way that they did their business to make sure that these loans would get approved. But I'm also nurturing them as tenants on you know, through the years making sure that I could help them in any way that I could. And I became somewhat of a tenant coach for all of these different tenant clients. And there are so many different industries. I mean, like every industry that you can think of the between the mom and pop retail stuff to the International, like international freight to e commerce attack, like everything. And so it was, you know, that that aside, I had carried that on throughout my entire, you know, corporate career. And it wasn't until I actually got fired from my job, where I just I just closed a $14.6 million deal got fired, didn't get the bonus that I was supposed to get got walking papers instead where I was like, What now? Now what? And then, you know, from that point that was like, that was my career rock bottom for sure. I didn't think that was possible because I was the highest performer in the company. And I had such a great reputation in the community. And my resume was just stellar. So how did that happen? This wasn't like, I didn't want to be an entrepreneur. It did not want that. Right. That sounds so scary to me, because I consider myself very risk averse. 04:57 And the safety net that I had been told 05:00 Throughout the traditional education model, get a job on retirement 401k savings pension if you can, and then you know, and then you live in your golden years. And that's that. So do your best work and all that. And that was a lie. So now I'm sitting here in this space where it's like, all right, your best shot at this point, when unemployment Wait, rates were very high, and they didn't have an employment, long run employment available any longer. It was like sink or swim. So I didn't want it. But I had to do it. If you look back at that, do you think that was probably the biggest blessing that you had? 05:35 Oh, for sure. Yeah, for two years. It was a it was depression. And it wasn't until I, you know, climbed out of that, that I look back. And I like when I drive by that, that former employer, every single time I'm in my car going, Thank You, Jesus, that you close that door for me, I would never have left on my own. And I know that it wouldn't, because you're scared. And I didn't think that it would have been a good life for me. Do you ever want to get a softball and just throw it at him? Get one, nice. 06:05 For a long time I did. I was a pitcher 06:09 or disappear. But I did for a while and my kids are my older two. I have four kids, my older two can remember when that happened. And and they're 13 and 15. Now, and we'll sometimes we'll drive by there and they'll say like, Hey, Mom, like you still mad? I'm like, no more, but they remember when I would drive my son. 06:30 So yeah, but yeah, no, you're right. It's it was the biggest blessing ever. And, and it was I was pushed off the ledge like a baby bird and learn to fly. And because of that, I was like, Wait a second. This is so much fun. Not only is this fun, but like this is nothing I went to school for I went to school finance, marketing, engineering, nothing I learned in university and I loved my school, not a single thing can I apply to my entrepreneurial journey here. So I'm looking at all of this differently. Right after that happened after like my first year in business on my own, and brick and mortar opening a wellness clinic, my husband's a chiropractor. So opening this wellness clinic, and everyone's saying three to five years take three to five years to get in the black. And it took me 18 months to turn six figures. So I did that without loans, without partnerships without affiliates, without any client base at all. So when I did that, I thought, Wait a second, like how if everybody in this space is telling us, this isn't possible for three to five years? What did we do, right? That I can help other people do right? So that they can save time. And like I know what it's like to be, you know, mother of four, trying to figure out what to do brand new and entrepreneurial journey and and if I got it right, I need to help other people because three to five years sounds like torture to me to get to where we needed to be right. So that's where it all started. And, and after that after the clinic opened, and we started doing really well we paint became the highest rated weight loss provider in the buffalo market. And I was like, This wasn't my dream. I did this out of necessity, my husband was happy. But what about me, um, and I went back to my roots, like I loved I loved being a consultant, I loved being a strategist for other businesses, I helped them that was meaningful, like that made their lives better that that helped them advance in their career, or it helped them earn more money for their families like that was meaningful to me. And I've had so much fun doing it ever since. Yeah. And again, I think with what's happened with the, you know, with the economy with the, you know, COVID with all the stuff that is going to be the way of the future, I really think it is I mean, it's going to be how we do things, and we have to learn these tools. I mean, we have to know what we're doing. And as you said, when we find someone that has been there when we find someone that's done that, why not go that route and learn from learn from them. I mean, that's the only way. Absolutely. And just curious, like when you were doing your your corporate stuff. It sounds like you were still using, I hate to say entrepreneur stuff, but you were to me, you were still thinking outside the box to help them outside of what your normal job was. So Oh, yes, yeah, you're right. Yeah, I never looked at it that way. But I yeah, you're right. And, um, it wasn't a It wasn't until like later on, like, maybe recently even that I thought, um, I wasn't taught that. But it was why was I doing it that way, when I know other people in my business weren't doing it that way for their clients and their tenants. It's, it's actually because I cared about them so much. And so I'm looking at them and it wasn't like, Um, let's see how we can get more money out of these clients. Let's squeeze them It looks like you know, it was more like, you have a relationship with them as they become your client. And you get to know them and you like them. And then they tell you about their goals and you are emotionally invested in their goals and you're thinking of ways that you can help them and 10:00 doesn't cost me anything to give them a good idea. And so when something sparks for me, and I give them a good idea, they apply it and they win. I'm going, ooh, what else can I give up? You know, and so that's kind of where that began. And then that led to further success for me, um, you know, through my clients in business, but, but it was like, it was like, an itch I needed to scratch like, I have to help people if I can, I have to. So um, but you're right, those those those things that I was applying weren't taught to me. But um, but I think that we all have, we all have these, like, these baked in skill sets that we can offer other people. And we never really tap into them unless the environment is like nurturing it, right? So like, unless you step into that space, and then all of a sudden, you're like, Oh, I'm good at this, or Oh, I've got something to offer. And then that, like, that's your thing. And like you touched on, you talked about how this is COVID. And this COVID here this whole year, has pushed people out of necessity into what are you going to do now? Like I was, but you know, different circumstances, like, what am I going to do now? And they have to learn? It's like, this is the scary thing for people like what Seriously? What do we do now? I have no idea. And I don't want to own a business and don't know how I'm so when it comes to that. It sounds It almost sounds childish for me to even advise, hey, what's your thing? What are you good at that little thing that you do, or that thing that lights you up doesn't even feel like work? I'm telling you to lean into that, like go into that space, there are a million ways you can apply your your your God given gifts into the business space and serve people at a high level and get paid for it. Most people don't believe that they can because they never have. I think and and i'm saying time to drop that nonsense. It's not even true. Whoever gave you that belief get over it. Like it's not true. It's bullshit. I mean, it truly is. bs, or it's your Bs, it's your belief system. And it's a it's a bad, it's about. And on top of that. People don't necessarily think that their gifts that they have, they don't see the value in him. I think that's the biggest thing that I see when I'm talking with people is they're good at something. But they do not see the value in it themselves. And that's one of the hardest things I have and talking with people is no, that is an absolute value. That is people want to know that people want to people will pay you for that knowledge. And so so, you know, first step is letting them letting them see, you know, what's the big How do you let people see what their, what their gift is? I mean, what are ways that people can say, Oh, this is my truly, you know, this is my gift. This is what I can give. Yeah, first of all, I gotta hit that, again, what you just said, most people don't believe that their gift is valuable. Oh my God, that's, that's probably the biggest message that needs to come out of this episode is that people don't actually attach the value that they deserve to their gift. It's, it's unbelievable. Because when even if it's this one thing, like even if it's, I'm going to use knitting as an example. Because it's like people have come up with all these different hobbies during COVID. Right, so so let's say this, this 60 year old woman who is a bang and crochet artist and can do the world's best booties, and little baby sweaters and everything. And she's just been doing it since forever. And this young mother who's 34, and has been trying to get pregnant for 10 years. And it's been her dream to knit something for her own baby. And she's never been able to do it. She doesn't know how. And this woman who's just like diddling around with like knitting needles, and she's been doing that for decades, doesn't think it's special, because all of her friends can knit. This woman comes to offer her like, I will give you $1,000 if you can teach me how to crochet in six weeks before this baby is born. So I can knit my baby booties and a sweater. I will, of course people are doing that people are doing that all over the world right now paying people 1000 2000 $3,000 to learn how to crochet or knit in about six to eight weeks, it's happening all over the place for a past time that used to be so normal, it was taught in school. And I think that just people if you if they have a value, if they have a skill set, I think that they need to 14:02 do the research on what people are actually paying for it. And then double it and start there. So when you say how do you know how do you know what your value is? Or what your what your gift is? Like what your skill set really is. The first place I like to go is the compliments you get from people What do people say you're good at? Like what do people thank you for? What do people always say? What are people referring your name out for in and that can be in, you know, in your personal life too. That doesn't have to be in business but like anything, so if they're complimenting you on something that you do well, it's probably something you enjoy, you know, it's it's not like oh my gosh, she's really good at balancing the books at the end of the year. She doesn't cuz she has to she doesn't love it. But like what do people say all year long that you're good at is an organization like oh, my gosh, she this woman is so good at organizing. It's like she can always find a way to clean things up for me or to like manage my stuff or to fix my kids schedule during you know, quarantine when it's been a mess. Or you know, what is the organization 15:00 Woman is the best like interior design or this man is the best if troubleshooting pieces that you have around the house and being able to fix them up in this way, there's so many different things that people do on the regular that they get credit for that they're like, Oh, yeah, that's just something I do, though. No, that's something you need to get paid for, if you're willing. So what you're saying is, I can actually get paid for being sarcastic. People compliment my sarcasm all the time. 15:27 So there's an avenue I need to go. 15:32 You can do and you could do a core point using sarcasm to leverage yourself in business, for using sarcasm to build relationships, in your business in your personal life in like mergers and acquisitions. There are negotiation strategies being taught through sarcasm right now in the world. Yes, that's, that's actually my first language. English is my second language. Sarcasm, number one, truly. And 15:59 so from a tool standpoint, or from a, I know, a method standpoint, where do you see things so you you bring these people in you, you show them? You know, here is what you're good at? Here's what you're passionate about? Here's the value you can add to other human beings? And what are the what are the biggest challenges you're seeing on people? When they do find this? How do they have they monetize it? How do they? How do they turn their gift and their passion into a into a business? Yes, good question. Perfect question. Because that's what matters in the end. So when you when you when you find your thing, and you're like, Oh my gosh, that's it. That is it. I love that I could really make money doing that. Yes. Okay. So once you get on board with the Yes, I can, then it's a matter of, Okay, well, where were you when you started doing this? Where were you? Where did you start? Okay, and where did you finish your finish there? Okay, what were the steps in between that took you from I'm just starting out to Hey, I'm really good at this. This is amazing. Because there's always a pattern, there's always steps. There's always like evidence or breadcrumbs, a trail that you leave behind that can show other people how to get there, too. And it's just a matter of actually taking a moment. And sometimes it's like taking a couple hours and falling back into your memory bank and saying, Where did I? Where did I start? Okay, then what did I do? Okay, I did that for a while, maybe that took me this long. And then what happened? What was the outcome after that, then I learned this, okay, then I took that, and I applied it to this, and just stack those steps to get to the end result. And that is your signature offer framework. That is what you can deliver to other people package that up. And when I say package that up, I mean, define those steps. And then within the steps, there should be, you know, instructions on how to get to the next step. Right. So that's just packaging your signature program, so that you can show other people how to get to where you went. And, and this can be done. Another thing, Shawn, is that people often say that, like they, they they even stop mentally, they block themselves by saying, I couldn't I couldn't actually do that, though, because I'm not a professional or I couldn't do that. Because like, I don't have a website, or I can't do that, because I don't have any acronyms at the end of my name. like nobody cares about your acronyms. You know how many people have asked me about my degree? since I graduated? None? Yep. Nobody asked me. They asked me Oh, how do you like work at Disney World? Oh, you got to you got to congressional nominations for the Naval Academy. Oh, you've lived in Canada, all you, they don't care about my degree, nobody cares. They, like I'm showing up for the job. They assume I have the degree that's it's like next day, so. And when you're online, nobody cares about any of that. They're like, prove it to me, prove it to me, by way of showing me online, that you can help me prove it to me by by giving me trainings for free to let me know that I can trust you prove it. So you don't have to show them a degree because it's garbage. And I mean, like people who have a license for their degree, that's different lawyers, doctors that that's different. But I really, I really want a surgeon to have a degree when they're working on me. But um, but I would rather have the surgeon that mentored with someone for 10 years over the degree. 19:02 The degree is, I don't know, I better have the experience. That's true. 19:08 That's true. I want I want an army surgeon who's been in triage locations all over the world first. You're right. So, but if they like, you know, if you show up and you serve people online with that thing, you know, you show them that you can get them from point A to point whatever, you only have to be one step ahead of them. That's it. That's it. And then they're there. People are often hanging on to this idea that they have to be the expert. There's no the expert in anything. I don't care how high up you go. Because somebody is coming right underneath to take that spot all the time. It's always shifting all the time. There's nobody that's the best ever. So let's get over it. And let's just say can you help them two steps behind you or one step behind you? Yeah, there are millions of people that could apply to so if you if you can just outline the framework of your signature offer by indicating which steps it takes to get there for that. 20:01 And then marketing that I can help you get from here to here, here are the steps it takes. That's all it is. Here's what it looks like for me. Now, here are the things that I struggled with. And here's how it's going now that I don't struggle anymore, here's the compelling future that I have. But here's how bad it sucked before I got here. If that sounds like, Whoa, come along. So it's just a matter of like marketing it that way, packaging up marketing that way. Because if you're clear on what you can do for people, and you let them know that, if you're clear, then they're clear, then they can decide for themselves. Yeah, that is something I want, I want that transformation to this person has a step by step outline for me, like, I can just go to them to help me get there perfect. So it's, it's just a matter of that. And then it's a matter of, you know, something, you talk about value, right? Like people don't don't necessarily value themselves, right. I tend to jump people up very quickly in their service pricing, however, I believe in being aligned with the offer that you have, because if you're not, at first, you won't sell it, you won't sell it right. It'll be weird, it'll come off creepy, it'll be like, do they not believe in it or what's going on, it's usually the money. So it's usually don't believe they should ask for this month, because much because they feel bad because they've done it for free in the past. Okay, so we need to also get over that. Now. You're certainly now you're serving people at a high level online, and you need to get paid for it. So once they can do that, it's like, Alright, if you can't energetically or emotionally or spiritually get behind, you know, a four figure number for a program, that's it's good that you've been doing that you take people through on 16 weeks or whatever, especially if it's a live training, that's worth that's worth more, if you can't really get behind it, there's nothing wrong with offering a lower a lower price. But you have to let them know, this is the only time we're going to do that. The only reason I have is a 1499 program, the only time I'm ever going to do this is now it is 397 This will be the last bunch. But in exchange for that extreme discount, I am going to require testimonials, possibly testimonial so that you can build that authority and that credibility and that social proof. And then what's beautiful about this is that then you do get paid, you get paid the money. And that proves to you that you can do it. And then you do the work. And you're like, oh, we're not we're not doing this for 397. Again, oh no, this is worth more, you find out it's hard, right? It's a little hard. Even if you love it, you gotta you gotta help people. So that I feel like that process, everybody kind of goes through that they create the structure, they start talking about it, they start helping people with it, they come up with a price, a lower price that they feel a little better about a little bit more aligned with at first and then they're like, Oh, no, and then they like triple, or quadruple and they're like, okay, I feel good about this for now. And then you get better. And as you get better, and the demand gets higher, you can increase it as you go. But that's that's where people need to start. Yeah. And I think you at that exact point when they sell their first stuff is lower than what they want. But I think right then is where I see the biggest mindset change. And people, once they once you, I mean success builds upon success. And once they get that first batch out of the way, the first money coming in, when they first sell it, that's when I see the biggest change in people's mindset of what they're capable of, and what they can do. And you'd mentioned something, I think it was probably one of my biggest setbacks is when I first started, you know, years ago, I thought I had to have all the technology in place. I thought I had to have the whole program done. I thought I had to. And that's not how people do it. I mean, you look at some of the great people, and they're literally building programs on the fly, based on the needs of the people. And you know, if you try building an entire, you know, 10 week program, and you haven't tested it, and you haven't developed it with people, I've done that, it I've gone through the biggest 23:48 I, you if you build it, they will come. No they won't. 23:53 You've got got a whip 23:57 I've tried, doesn't work that way. But I did 24:03 work. If you waste a ton of time doing it that way. And you think you know, as good as you are as good as anyone is you think you know, and you have no idea. You always assume people are further along with you. They're not right, you got to back you got to back it up. And you also have to fill all these holes. Think about so I'm with you like I I believe in. I believe in live training. The first batch I don't believe in course creation above other things. But there is a place for course creation for sure. But I believe in the live interaction. There's so much more value there. It's better for everybody. You're in the moment they have the your clients have the ability to do q&a with you. It's just better. And then what's beautiful about that is that you know shine like you extract, you extract what they need in that moment and say, say you did a six week course like a live training course and they showed up every Monday for two hours for six weeks. And that first week you gave them this stuff that you had for the first week. 25:00 And then at the end of the program at the end of that two hours, we're like, Hey, guys, how did you do? How did you like, what did you not? Are we clear on this? And then you're thinking, Okay, I'm ready for week two, and then they answer you, and you're like, Oh, you guys are not ready for week two, I'm gonna have to come up with something else. But because you're the expert, you know what we'll need based on their reaction? And then you just shift and adjust for that. But you would otherwise you would have wasted how many hours? How many hours creating this course that you can't even use after week two? Yeah. And what do you what do you think about me? Even for me, sometimes the biggest thing about going live is the fear people have. 25:37 People would rather die than go live. I mean, it's like, that is the biggest fear people have. And it's like, man, how do we get over that? Because, as you said, you can build stuff and build stuff, and no one's gonna, unless you have that energy from the I'm the same way. I love doing live because, to me, it forces me to think more into what the people need, you see them, you're getting feedback. And it's almost like a mastermind, you you can't think about that without those people, those people for me, the it drives better, better content and drives better ideas and drives better things. But that point of going live, hitting that live button or doing things with with people, it scares the crap out. Even people who were doing it live in the past, in person, you get in front of a camera and people change. They do I think, what are some of them? Yeah, what are some things that you do with your clients that help them with the you know, to me, it's all fear. It's all bullshit. And it's all in your head, but it's there. Okay, so I, I was there to, like, you know, I'm a, I'm a trained keynote speaker, I can get on stages and do this, I can get on virtual stages and do this. But that was not always the case. And I didn't even get on social media until 2019. So, um, I went when somebody and it wasn't until somebody said to me, um, you need to be going live like you're not translating any of your personality or any of your help online. And I'm like, Yeah, I hate social media. So I'm not doing it. And I you know, this this though, to me, all it was is a bunch of like, comparison Bs, like, just just brag fast. I just, I hated the idea of this toxic online space. I hated it. So I I just, I just blackballed it. And then somebody challenged me to say, okay, you do one live, and you help people in the way that I know you do in your clinic and in real life and in with your clients and everything. You go live and do it online. If you don't help anybody, and nobody wants to hear it. I'll never ask you to do it again. But if you do you do another one. And I was like, Oh, you're on. You're on. I'm about to, like, break friends. And this is gonna be so I went live. And before I did, I had so I have anxiety and panic disorder. Anyway, so I was I when I say that I was shaking, like I had cold sweats. And I was shaking. And I was like, doing deep breathing exercises. Because I was being I was being like, there she was in the corner, I was being forced. So I had to press the button. I went live, I go back and go back and look at that live. And I'm like, oh, gosh, you were so nervous. Why? Why reason nervous. And I blocked a bunch of people on my live like, you can block people on your friends list from seeing that live, which was felt safer. I'm like, Okay, I'll just keep those sarcastic people out of the way. Sean's not watching so well. 28:30 But I just didn't want any like, I didn't want it feel any jokes or anything else. Because like, everybody knew I don't go online. So all of a sudden, Sandra's gonna show up online? Who does she think she is a hypocrite? You betcha. So after that, I got such good feedback from people. And I was like, I have to help them. No, I have to like not because somebody said, but because these people are hurting. And they were so grateful. Now I have to. And so for me, when I teach other people how to how to get over the fear of going online, you often have to challenge them to do it in a way that's meaningful for them. Like, here's the outcome if you if you do this challenge. And when I do that, there's ways to do this, where like, you're looking at the camera. And on the other side of the camera, for me, is my dream client, my ideal client that I know that I can help and maybe it's a best friend of mine that's been sitting on my couch in tears before because she can't figure out how to get to the next step. And I'm saying, You are so good at this, it's on the other side, you have to do this. Here's why. Here's what this looks like. If you could just get over the fear part. Just block that for a second. Here's what's available for you all of this. And so when you look through the lens and know that there's a breathing heartbeat soul on the other end of that lens, that it's not this big, like chasm of judging people, it's a soul that needs your help on the other end of that camera lens. Does that change your mind? Does that make you feel differently? Because I'm I can tell you now as fearful as I was for so long and sometimes still am when I go up to speak and I don't know if you ever get that too, but like I still get nervous before. Right? And, and so if there was I've decided that if there was an audience 30:00 5000 people, and they were all like making fun of me rolling their eyes on their cell phones ignoring me. But there was one person in the back of the room in tears, because they were so grateful for what I was saying, I would keep going, despite anybody else in their opinion of me, because that person is in pain. That's, I think that's how most humans are built. So if you can, if you can just imagine that there's somebody that needs your help on the other end of that, like you've established that you're good at something, you know that your thing has value, you're going to price for it, now you're going to talk about it, talk about it, because somebody needs your help, not because you're worried, like, don't worry about the friends and family that might be like, Oh, he's going online. Now. That's interesting. How about block then if you don't like it? How about hide their hide their eyes from your life? Or how about ignore the fact that they're judging you at all? Because they might be cheering you on quietly? And the other thing is, if they're not? are they paying your bills? Do they help you financially? Do they have a say in what you do with your life, like all of these things, and you know, to shine like all of these things are limiting beliefs that keep you from greatness. And I feel like, if we could all have a snapshot view of what our life could look like, if we were to say no to all those fears all along the years, if we would have said no to all those things, what would we have right now? I feel like we would all be heartbroken if we could do that. So if we can now say, all right, COVID is forcing us to pivot things or pressure, like things or pressure us all around me, I want to I want to do something with this. But I don't know how can you just decide that fear doesn't get to say anything this time? And just try it and see, because the the worst thing that will happen is that you'll learn something great out of it. And most probably you'll do well, most probably Yeah. And I think especially with you know, with what's going on, we can't meet in person like we had in the past. 31:48 I mean, this is and this is great. And when we see each other on here, we're you know, we're communicating online, it's still not the same from a personal standpoint, but it's better than than not, it's better than to me just posting stuff, it's like, you're still we still have a connection, I'm still looking looking at you in your eyes, we're still having a connection, we're still doing that. And it's to me that video is so, so important. And it's where we accept, but it's where we're going, we have to, we have to be able to do that, in order to be successful. I think in any business that's online, now you have to be able to have, because without that live, without that interaction, you're not going to build the connections. And to me, that's what it is. It's it's not making a sale, it's not selling someone it is absolutely making a connection with someone. And you can't do it without. Without video, you really can't. I mean, not in the same way, you're right. 32:42 Not in the same way at all. And there are two things, two beautiful things that have happened out of COVID. For this reason, first of all, people are disconnected from brands, from big brand names from big box retailers from global brands, they're disconnected. Nobody has a relationship with Coca Cola, you might have nostalgia with Coca Cola and emotions tied to the brand, but you don't have a relationship with them, because they're not a person. But they you can have relationships with individuals who are serving you, and spending their time and their heart and their energy and their bandwidth, trying to help you you have a relationship with those people. And you do that by way of video connecting with them to like because you need you need the proof that they're like living, breathing moving, right, right. Anybody could cat fish with online, you need proof that this person is a person. And so the second thing, so that's one beautiful thing is that the individual brands like the self branded, like the US, the me's, the people out here that are doing their thing online. People build relationships with us, and they trust us and they love us, and we love them back and trust them back. And this is how we do business because it's not transaction, its relationship, right. And then the second thing that's beautiful is that now no one has an excuse to not get online. The physicians that I used to work with my clientele my patient basis, you know, 66 years older, they'll never get online there. Oh, these guys are younger, they don't have time to get online. They don't check emails anymore. Not anymore. Now the entire globe is forced to create zoom meetings interact online. This is it's it's a force feed and telemedicine has come I don't know, like five years in the last three months. It's amazing now, and everybody sat on their hands because they didn't feel like it because they got other things to do. And now that we're all being forced, everybody knows how to do business with you. There's no excuse anymore, and people are comfortable with it today. 34:30 It's almost like we got fired from our job of normal living we got fired from our normal way of doing things and now this is we're forced to do this this is you know, sink or swim you're gonna do it or you're or you're not. And so one of the things so you are doing your generation impact stuff, which is to me that that is such a great name for for what you're doing. What What is generation impact. What What are you guys doing over there? First of all, thank you we ruminated over that name for a long time because because of our intentions for people 35:00 generational impact was born out of the idea that we, we, me and my partners, Shane Thrall and David Walden, we decided that, you know, the people that we're meeting in the online space, like you said, didn't believe in themselves enough, they didn't realize where their value was lying. They didn't understand that they they're like walking treasures to the world. And we're saying, if you could tap into that, and give it to other people, do you understand what kind of impact you can make? So we're saying this whole generation of people that is willing to step out and say, like, what's my gift, how helped me serve, you can make the biggest impact, you have no idea, generationally making impact on other people's generations, depending on what you do wealth. generational wealth is available, like health, like relationships, it's all available to people. And we're saying, alright, as generation impact, what can we do to be the first domino that knocks down all these other dominoes that makes the impact across the world. And so what we do is we have to, we have basically two legs of the company where the one we are teaching, we have an academy that teaches entrepreneurs online, how to grow and scale their business, how to be efficient, how to how to create those sales, how to market themselves properly, how to build a team, how to deploy this brand for themselves. And then secondarily, we have a consulting side, where we consult with corporations, and we build training materials for them workshop trainings, we help their their team learn new mechanisms for sales and marketing online in this space, and shifting and growing and, you know, basically all the strategy that you need as you change in a company, and companies are kind of notorious for doing things an old way, until something is pretty painful, and they're forced to shift. Well, if we can help them avoid that pain and grow bigger without as much cost, then we're going to do that, too. So, so we're basically helping b2c and b2b at the same time in different ways. Right. And I, you know, I think that is so important that you have these, you have these tools, in the end companies like yours available, because you can truly compress with with what you do, you can help someone compress something that might take them a few years to learn and develop in a extremely short amount of time. And, and I think one of the one of the best things that I'm seeing out of out of COVID is, you know, the people that you're helping, you're helping them generate their their passion, their love into businesses, I have been out in it, absolutely fascinated with some of the great imagination, and the great things that people are starting to produce, and put out there to the world. I think that is one of the greatest things that has happened with with COVID is people are now seeing that and I'm starting to see these companies or these people develop their their companies and some of the stuff is just amazing of what they're doing the ideas that they're coming up with. It's it's absolutely amazing to to watch these people finally, open up and develop what they were, what to me what they were really meant to do. What the the I don't know that the they're so industrious, like humans are. So they surprised me every day. And every time I see not only the names they've been really giving me life this year. But but the but the inventions and the ideas and the and the way that people are willing to say, let's see, let me let me try. Let me shift it and try it this way. And you're going yeah, like you can do it. I feel like I'm just on the other side of the screen, like cheering people on all the time. Because every new idea, and there's so many when we're forced to figure stuff out and get creative. It's amazing what we can come up with. But like you said, I feel like like we birthed a new way of life in this COVID like time and the time of COVID. And it's almost like those, like those cartoon reels where you see all the men in suits and hats, and what they're walking in black and white, and they're all like, you know, a mob of men just walking to work with briefcases. And then there's somebody over here in color, like bouncing around doing things differently. I feel like that's where we're going now, where this was the way that of the of the past. And this is the way now it's more fun. It's more free, there's more opportunity, because people are willing to see things a little differently. Yeah, and with what's available now with the technology that's available, and where people's mindsets are, anybody can be a company, anybody can be an author, anybody can be a speaker, anybody, you you have everything you need to be as big as anybody else. There's nothing now there is nothing holding people back you have the same assets available to you as a entrepreneur as a solopreneur then big companies had in the past you can now that that's the biggest thing is from literally from your phone, you can create content you can create you can create amazing things but just the simplest stuff that you have now and it's all available to everybody if they know if they have the mindset so you know that's where you come in as you help them with the mindset that they can do it and here's how you do it. But no longer is to me no longer as technology or no longer as all these big, you know brick and mortar assets that people had. That's not a that's not a 40:00 They stop or anymore that the absolutely no stop or anybody upgrade anything. And that's the biggest thing I see is anybody can create anything that they want now. It's amazing. Isn't it like that? That sounds like if you said that in the 80s, you'd be like, okay, big finger settle down. Yeah. But now it's like there's nothing more true. I mean, you don't need a website, you don't need a website to get started. You don't need it. You don't even need that. So you don't even have to pay to host what you have. You have free access to any social platform online. And if you market yourself that way, with your cell phone, sure you have to pay for internet and like a cell phone bill. But that is it. That's it. So the opportunities really are available to everybody, kids, teenagers, young teenagers, kids younger than that are making money online right now doing whatever they're good at. It's unbelievable. It's It's wild. It's like the new Gold Rush. It is Oh, absolutely. 40:54 Yeah. And and people are, you know, they're creating this, this sense of freedom for them. Like there's nothing better. There's nothing but there are some things but there's nothing better for me, when I'm when an entrepreneur finally gets to the point where they're like, Okay, fine. No, no, no, you're right, I'm gonna get out of my head. I'm just gonna do the things. We do those things and launch myself. I'm gonna put myself out there. And I'm like, Yes, yes, let's do it. And then they get paid, and say they have like a 5000, or a 10,000, or like, a 27,000 launch. Or, or they have that that conversation with a new client, and they sign a $45,000 contract like this. And I'm going, how did that change your life? Talk to me about the things you can do. Now, talk to me about how you can grow your business. Now talk to me about how now you have a team. Now you have more time because your team is doing some of the work. And now you can actually I don't know, take your first vacation ever with your children in 10 years. What does that like? Like? Those kind of wins are exponential, because I know they're helping their clients. Let's talk about that. Like, how did your life change? It's an It's amazing. They're saying, with my camera phone, and my computer, that's all it took? Yeah. Love belief in yourself, too. That's awesome. Yeah. And it's funny, it's when it's a bad moment. And I'm sure you see this a lot. It's that that moment you actually see it in their eyes, you actually see it in their stature. When that light goes off. You can you can physically see that light going off in their in their head and like, wow, yeah, this is this is it? We can do this? Yeah, that to me, that's the funnest thing. Yeah. And so you But see, you've done that your entire seat. And that's the thing you want to be one of your gifts is yes, you care about your you know, all your clients, you care, you care that they are successful, you care that they get what they want. But you've done that your entire career. So you even when you were doing your real estate stuff, you were that's part of your DNA, that's part of who you are of helping people and you and everything you do you actually, you know, I see that in you on all this. I've seen you on stage. I've seen you, you know, on doing your stuff. And that always comes out that you absolutely care about the outcome of the person. And that it did does it absolutely shows if I could I don't process data that passed. Again, I'm going back to you are so good and so fast to what you do. It's like I can't process it that fast. It's so much so much great data. I'm like, bouncing around in my head. So let me ask you this on a percentage, if we had a percentage a 50%? Or could you strike me out with a softball still? 43:31 Yeah. How was that? 43:34 You didn't have to think about that. And then you say you're from Canada? 43:39 Oh, go ahead. Yes. 43:42 I was gonna say because two things. Um, because muscle memory is a little ridiculous. When you play a sport for so long. It's not hard to pick it back up pretty quickly. But also because most people can't hit a hit and underhand fast pitch, especially men who are used to playing baseball, and they're looking for the overhand release. So that's usually even even my baseball player buddies like D one, like I would pitch to them, we'd mess around and I pitch to him. And it wasn't that hard to strike them out. There D one baseball players like but would piss him off. 44:13 I better pass them off to I bet it would piss them off. Oh, yeah. 44:18 And then also, ya 44:22 know, so being from Canada. Do you know what a Looney tune is? 44:27 Of course, see now, transactional currency, but no one actually use it. So we went to me and my wife, we went up to I think Quebec City a couple years ago. And I convinced her to always talk like she was gonna pay and loonies and toonies. People there thought she was a nut. But I convinced her that she had to call them loonies and toonies. 44:48 She's never lived that down. And 44:51 but finally someone said, Hey, 44:54 what are you type? We don't call them loonies and toonies. We're just in the background. 45:00 You're you went to Quebec City? Yes. And that they're very French. So they're not going to call them that probably great. And so anywhere else in the southern part of Canada, if you say alluded to, and for listeners that don't know, I'm sure some people are googling it like what is that? But, but a loony is just $1 coin and today is a $2 point. And so, um, Canadians don't use pennies anymore. They're no longer part of the circulation. So everything rounds up to an even number. But, or like a five or zero but, but if you go if you you're safe shot if you go and you bring your wife to Southern Ontario, and you said Looney intuitive they'd be like, Yeah, no, I got it. But um, it came back city, like Montreal, like all the chemical I will um, they'll prefer it if you speak French period. Yes, carry it. And I don't do it well, so they don't like it 45:52 at all, but it was a man. We loved it up there. It was absolutely. Absolutely beautiful. 45:57 Isn't it? Yes. It was cold. There was brand new years. So we went New Year's Eve, we did some big rave, outdoor rave. New Year's Eve. It was wild. But yeah, it was it was cold. I'm from Texas. Yeah, well, I'm from Colorado, but oh, I've acclimated to Texas, and it's damn cold. 46:21 It's your blood wasn't ready. was not ready at all. But I've had an absolute fantastic, fantastic time. Thank you for coming on the podcast. And everybody go to you know, we're gonna put the you know, those listening, go to the show notes because we're gonna have all the ways that you can contact xandra and also going to generation impact group Comm. I'm telling you, this is the way this is the way the future and everybody, here's the thing. I think every household in the next year or two is going to have a business. Every household is going to have a side gig side business from doing what they love to some being forced, like you, you know, they're they've lost their jobs, they've lost their way of income, some just because they have the desire to do it, but everybody is going to every household is going to have a side business. And I just love the stuff that you guys do. So thanks so much for being on being on the podcast and adding so much value.

Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. Today we have probably the most organized guest I have ever had on the show, Jess Dual. Jess is the managing partner of Red Direction, providing executive business consulting and producing the BOLD Business Podcast. She brings over 20 years of advising, consulting, and facilitation experience in operational excellence and growth management focusing on where values and goals intersect. Both practical and unexpected, her views tune into to the uniqueness of the organizations she works with. Companies working closely with Jess learn to ask the right questions and think effectively on their feet. Jess specializes in working with companies at critical points in Today we are thinking big on how taking a present retreat equals to business performance. From Chaos to Control 3 Step Framework to Change Your Relationship with Meetings ... and Your Team https://9n9jedi5.pages.infusionsoft.net/ Connect with Jess Dewell at the following social media link: Website https://reddirection.com/ Email contactus@reddirection.com The BOLD Business Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/voice-of-bold-business-radio/id1250990887 Books from the episode Giraffes Can't Dance A Question of Value Do you Quantum Think Leaders are Readers, here are some free books for you to get. Free copy of Think and Grow Rich http://bit.ly/free-think-and-grow-rich-ebook The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge https://bit.ly/tagrchallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until next week, remember to always think big Ratings and reviews directly impact search rankings for the Thinking Big Podcast. So please help us get more ratings and reviews. Episode Transcription SUMMARY KEYWORDS retreat, sticky notes, people, books, business, podcast, important, thinking, ideas, week, present, leadership, meeting, big, growth, awareness, priorities 00:49 I really want to welcome you Jess to the thinking big podcast, I followed your work. I've seen the stuff that you've done. I've seen your podcast, listen to your podcasts, all great stuff. Tell the thinking big podcast listeners a little bit about you. 01:29 I don't even know where to start with that question, Shawn. It's so funny. I mean, there are so many different pieces, right? My very first job was as a Girl Scout selling Girl Scout cookies to raise money so that I could send myself to camp, right helped my family be able to send me away to go sailing or horseback riding, or just day camps where we did archery and hiked and learned how to cook and things like that all the way up to the time when I decided I was going to be a scientist. That was after I was going to be a nun. And after I was going to be a fighter pilot, but I haven't gotten yet to like truck driver. And I want to be a cross country truck driver Sunday gardener. beekeeper, right. And then in general, these days, I build businesses. So somewhere in there have been all of these experiences that have something that has propelled me forward that curiosity that I bring to the world. And so right now it's building businesses, and in fact, it has been for over 20 years. And I think I found the place being a cheerleader and a support and 02:33 an outside set of eyes, a trusted advisor for companies that are really looking to navigate a difficult situation for your post acquisition. And even just how do we do? How do we use what we have that much more than we already are? And it's interesting that you bring up, you know, stuff that you did very early on as an entrepreneur. It's funny talking with entrepreneurs. 03:01 That is a telling sign when almost every entrepreneur when they were young, did something to make money to do it. It doesn't start when you get older, I think you it's 03:15 it starts at very young age. I mean, you you you become an entrepreneur very, very young. Right, I and by the way I knew early on sales was right. But helping other people make sales and being part of something bigger, right? All the things we got as a troop of all the Girl Scout selling cookies was always more interesting to me than anything I got on my own, which was still really good. Don't get me wrong. And that's I think you're right about that, Shawn. And those traits that come out at those early ages are the ones that do seem to stay with you and maybe can be found and whatever we're doing today. I remember, I must have been in, I don't know, third or fourth grade and I would I used to make cinnamon toothpicks. So I would dip cinnamon in or I dip toothpicks and cinnamon let them soak get really hot at something like 10 cents apiece. Yeah, that's 04:06 brilliant. I was hustling toothpicks at third grade. So you were an inventor and an entrepreneur. Yeah. And here's the thing. I think that's where all of our genius comes in when you have an idea. And you mix that with a little bit of creativity. I think that's where all the cheese comes from. So I said, Well, people like cinnamon. People like toothpicks. I'm gonna combine the two and I'm gonna make cinnamon toothpicks. I had in third grade. I made a fortune in third grade doing that. 04:36 Well, no, that's brilliant. I actually may pass that on to my son who's nine these days. And he he calls himself an inventor. He doesn't really he likes to sell things, but he really thinks they're really valuable and we're still working on the you have to have something that is valuable enough for somebody to part with their money for Yes. Um 04:56 so his cardboard arcade machines are awesome. 05:00 To him, but nobody wants to pay $1 to play them. 05:05 Why not? I know, right? That's what I'm like, well, you'll have to keep working on that that's a problem. You can you can chew on that one for a little while. It's all good. And and I think that that's an important thing to consider, too, because we are at a time where we believe and we're told, and it's reinforced that we have this internal value. 05:26 Sometimes it's really hard to bring that to the surface, though, isn't it to find out? Well, what is that sweet spot of service of production of the result of the exchange of money for what we are bringing to the table? Whatever our role is, right? Yeah. And I think that's, and I think now, now, more than ever, I think that's hugely important. How much is the current situation affecting, like what you do? as an industry as as you know, this has made such huge changes? 05:53 Yeah, well, so the work that I do really is it's that resiliency piece, that resiliency mapping, that, that that stuff that seems very inefficient in the day to day, but it's like a fire drill, when you know what the fire drill is supposed to be like. And if that bell ever got pulled, or you heard that sound, you knew what to do you know, who you were looking for, you knew where to go, you knew who you were expecting there, and there was some order in it. And I think that this time has really shown us Do we have those those equivalent of the fire drills within our companies. 06:30 And if we don't, we're feeling it more than if we do. And whether even if they're dusty, even if we haven't practiced them in years, or thought about them, and they their documents, living in a drawer, collecting dust, the fact that the exercise was gone through is really a key piece in what I'm seeing, not only in my organization, but also in the companies that we serve of, Well, okay, so you have to build as you go versus because you've thought about it, it's actually a little bit easier, because you have some you have a starting point with which to respond from, versus react all the way through, right. And in some of your stuff that I've looked at, you know, you talk about a present retreat, what what is a present retreat? What exactly are you talking about? When you when you talk about that? Can I can I be real with you? That that is like a name that I settled on? Because I couldn't think of anything better. I'm a horrible namer of things. However, this one has, and this one, no, I have a lot of different meanings, which is one of the keys, it's not always straightforward. And so I'm like, Okay, let me just honor that. The present retreat for me was a time I got to take a timeout for myself and really do some strategy. And the more that I did this, the more I thought about, well, what are the things that might happen right now? And do what have we thought about them? What are the things that I need to do as a leader what is in in what's out? Am I discerning correctly, based off of the trends I see and the actual results of what's happening? And then the third piece, this concept of a retreat, 08:05 really is being able to, to unplug from things to have space. Right. And, and so that's kind of like the spa day. But it's also if you think about it in the relation in relationship to war, a retreat was not failure, a retreat was a place to pause, take stock of everything that there is, and decide how to go forward with what we have, right. So that in return to the present retreat is in the moment. 08:28 Taking that pause, what do we have? And how do we move forward? I think and I think that is such a huge problem in general, not only with leaders, but I think with with everybody, especially with, you know, all the social media, all the things that we're being bombarded with, we don't take time anymore to reflect. And to make for me, if I internalize that, it's, I need to take time to sit back and reflect on both my wins and my losses on a daily basis. Because if I don't, if I don't sit back, and I don't actually think about what I've done for that day, my wins my losses, I'm not going to learn anything. Um, and, and to me, it's, I look back over the last six months, and it's harder and harder, even though I've been at home. Most the time. I, you know, I've done you know, obviously, you know, social distancing. I actually seem like I have less time for myself. For these retreats. I spent less time I actually stopped, right. I mean, depending on the situation in your household. I know in our household. I've already mentioned my nine year old, we were assistant teachers, between the adults in the house to him. And I have to say that that right. I stopped my present retreats during that time and it was only four weeks. I do them once a week. It was only four weeks, but I realized I had not only had gone backwards. I actually when I was plugging back into them. I was like oh I can't do this. I have to plug back in. I actually had 10:00 To ramp back up and really figure it out. And so this is something that I recognize and realize that anybody that works with me, we figure out what what it is some people are disciplined enough and can can take a whole day week, that's an important thing to consider. And I think that that is ultimately my goal. I'm I'm not at a place where I will commit to that I will commit to half a day for four hours a week, I am in this closed space. And that is what I challenge all of the clients and the companies that I'm working with, to do, how do we get up to that four hours in a row that's uninterrupted and protected time? Yeah. Because think about all the distractions I don't know about you, Shawn, I am incredibly fatigued decisions. If people would just tell me what to do from here on out, I would gladly follow directions I am exhausted from all of the decisions to be made. Yeah. And the present retreat actually can help with that some. But when we have so much extra pressure on all these other areas, we really do like to your point, we have to take that self time. Yeah. And Maverick, one of my mentors, john Maxwell, he actually takes a week, at the end of every year, an entire week, and goes through all his journals, all his every one of his planners, his daily planners, his weekly planners, and literally, and I've done it, and boy, it's it's hard, hard work to do that. But it's, you know, for an entire week going over. So the same thing you know, you're talking about on a daily basis on a weekly basis. He actually does it on an annual basis as well. And it is telling you it is so important to do those it is absolutely That's impressive. I do things semi annually. I do things twice a year, but I don't it's not a week. Or it might be a day and it might be two days, but it's never been a week and now and definitely not all at once. Ooh, I think I have a new bar, Shawn. 12:00 I've just taken that and raised it up a little bit. Yes, you did. And that's what it's all about. Right? That the discipline and the willingness and the commitment to understand where is the opportunity? And what is what are the skills? We actually have to have to move toward that? Yeah. Now, what do you think are some of the most important reasons that we sit back and reflect on why do these retreats? I mean, what are what are some of the, you know, what are three of the biggest things you get? And when you teach your your clients and stuff, you know, what, what's the purpose that they that they do these? Why is it so, so important? 12:35 So there are three soft skills, and there are three outcomes. The three soft skills that are developed in this is the ability to discern, right? What filters do I need? And can I trust in in? Can I run information through with confidence? The second is ruthlessness. I love this word. I love this word. Because we are not ruthless enough in business, we have to know if something is out. Well, let's let it be out. And let's not be worried about the fact that we'll if we don't say yes, we won't have the buy in from our team. Or we might stifle the creativity of our team. If we need to say no, we can actually then be and clearly say no, we can actually, we're actually better at saying well, this is where we're going. And here's the guide with which to work within. And then those people with ideas are going to come back with better ideas that move things forward, because they have guidance. And they've been shown a path that everybody gets to move toward together. And the third is then the skill of prioritization, which sounds easy. But after everything has been filtered with that discernment, and after it's been ruthlessly allowed through, then that concept of prioritization is, can I keep it front and center until it's done, and focus on the priority, not time priorities, the priority, until until it's done. And so Scott, soft skill development is really important, because that's what we're modeling to our teams, Shawn. And when our teams are able to pick up some of these skills, I know, you know, john Maxwell talks, your mentor, he's somebody that I am, have read some of his books as well. And he talks about this a lot. We lead by example. And so the soft skills that we embrace are the ones that we are modeling, which means we're teaching which means we're stating what is what is okay and what is not okay in our behaviors and the way that work is done. 14:27 And then, you know, we're talking about some outcomes of this, really, the outcomes of a present retreat happen to be that we can reduce the whole amount of overwhelm. So when something crazy happens, like a pandemic, or when something crazy happens, like we get called out of town unexpectedly, or we have to we have a family situation, or our neighbors really need us, or what we can really do is recognize that we're we're more likely to be in sync because we practice them 15:00 Because we take the time to reflect, as you said at the beginning, and then the second thing they are, is that, you know, 15:09 we're never we can actually shift away from putting out fires to proactively responding. Oh, I know what I want to do here. Oh, yeah. Oh, you know what you want to do here? Great. Tell me. Yep, that fits within, off we go. Off you go. And then the thing, you know, the third thing there is, it's much, it's much easier to find that moment, or the signs that lead to the fact that a growth plan has been outgrown and requires change, right? And now on your, on your stuff, or on your retreats. Do you? How do you do a specific thing? I mean, is it a specific way that you do them? Is it you know, random, I mean, how do you how do you do your? Yeah, mine, they're pretty structured. And I didn't, okay, so when I discovered this, and I'm not the first person to discover CEO time or reflection time and or my present retreat time, okay. By far I'm not, this was my journey. It started out, oh, I've got four hours. Right. I caught up on my emails, the first time in years, I had like five emails in my inbox. Every drawer in my desk was clean. every area of my office was dusted. My my little bin that I have to put all my recycled papers in when I'm done was empty all the time. And then it got to the point where I was like, hmm, cool, I feel caught up, there's nothing else to do I get to, I get to learn what's next. So I had to be busy for a while until there was nothing to be busy with. And then came the time where I was like, oh, gosh, this spaciousness allows all kinds of ideas to show up. And so I've actually implemented a whole bunch of other systems that come from that, that helped me in my workflow. And I will tell you, all of the clients that I have taken through this go through the same thing, they even if it's just an hour at a time, and they're working up from that, the first several sessions are Oh, let me let me catch up. Oh, I have a voicemail. Oh, I have that report. Oh, I have that idea. And see the thing of a present retreat isn't to catch up. It's actually to do the thinking that deep work Cal Newport would say that the deep work 17:17 and and understand what can we do to ensure we can find where are we in sync? Where are we out of sync? Right? Right. And I think that that's a huge piece of it right there just being able to sit in the time. Well, I can tell you, you would have your work absolutely out for you. Because I think right now I've got 20,000 emails 17:40 in my inbox, 17:42 I've got shit. See, I said it. Shit. I've got it everywhere. Let me tell you, you would have your work absolutely cut out. 17:53 Oh, I have sticky notes. Every see mine and mine are piles and ideas of sticky notes on they're stuck to everything around my around the office there in books. I actually was preparing for this podcast. And I was like, I know we may talk about books. And because I know you like to talk about books and reference books. And so I and I brought I brought nine ideas for books grouped in threes, just because I was like, Well, what if so I have sticky notes and books across strewn across my desk right now that I'm like, maybe I should leave them out. See I have I haven't even made it a sticky note yet. I'm still drawing on my desk. 18:30 I love sticky notes. And the colors end up meaning something even though I don't know what they are at first. All that good stuff, my anxiety levels going up just listening to colors, sticky notes. See, okay, by the way, I just like color because it made it seem less scary. And it turned out I actually was using the colors to mean something. And so for me, there's a system, but there's no way I could describe that system or ask anybody else because if somebody tried to teach me the system that I inherently have, I would be like, you know, what would happen if you went to the store for the blue sticky that you have to have for something and they were out of blue? See that? Right? 19:10 That doesn't see that doesn't bother me. I'll just insert another color and we'll just know 19:15 that 19:17 I just that's way over. That's way over my paygrade Are you a perfectionist? 19:24 Yes. And yes, I can see why you would then have to have the exact same color. 19:32 We dry girl we digress we 19:35 so on getting back to you know the retreat. One of the things that I you know, I don't have a specific, I guess I have a specific way that I do kind of my thinking and stuff but to me when I do these reflections, I do these retreats. 19:50 To me, that's when I get most of my creative ideas. things come to me from a creative standpoint of things I should do. Now the problem is I don't know 20:00 Normally, I have sticky notes with me. So I forget, five minutes after I think, but I have some amazing ideas. So now I need you to teach me the sticky note. So I can take those amazing ideas and actually put them on a. 20:13 I was people could see this. Okay, so here's how I this is actually how I work because I don't know. But if you're not tactile, it wouldn't work, Shawn. So what I do is I have a, I have two boxes that I set on my desk because I put everything if I'm around, and I'm out, I always have sticky notes with me. It's random little teeny, tiny pieces of paper. And so I'll put things on them. I have, and this is what I actually do my present retreat, I have the reports that I pull that I'm looking at, I have the issues at hand, I have a dynamic SWOT for what's going on in the business at any point in time. And I call it dynamic because we use it that way. And then I have these two boxes, I have the now and near box of sticky notes. And I have the future, which is six months to a year in the future. And by the way, that's actually drawn on with a sticky note. 21:02 The future 21:04 do you notice? I did I cut the sticky note sticky part to label my boxes? Oh my god. See? Now remember, when I let's go back just a few minutes. I said I have 20,000 emails in my inbox. Yeah. If I went to sticky notes, I would have sticky notes wallpaper everywhere. They would be just as disorganized as 21:25 as my email so well. And here's the thing, the only thing that goes in those boxes are my ideas, or initiatives or concepts because I haven't discerned them yet. I haven't been ruthless about do they fit with where our current goals are? And does it align with our long term mission. And I don't know if they fit our priorities. But they're things I don't want to forget. So they have they have a place to go. Because I don't want to take into my mind. But I also know I don't want to forget them. And so what you saw today is a Friday, I do my president retreats on Monday. And so they'll get weeded out because I'll go through the the near and now on I touch every week and stuff is coming out of there. If and if there's things that I can actually get done, then it goes into other systems and some stuff like that. But it's the time I have to reflect on all of the ideas that I was able to capture goes in there. And you know, I mean, and so for me, it actually helped because I quit feeling like I was forgetting things. I quit feeling like I was missing opportunities be and I quit feeling like I don't have time to really assess them. Because I made time. And in that time I can recognize and spend spend thoughtfulness does it work, does it fit? And if not, was it really for me? Or was it for somebody else that I can be in service to right? See what did the genius thing about what I do is I forget what I forget. So then I just don't? I don't even remember? I don't know. You know, can you teach me that? 22:55 It's been years in the making years, years of training? Oh, well, if you ever figured out the first step, help me out because I could save a few trees. 23:07 Now I was on your website. And one of the things that you know, again, I'm I love john Maxwell, I love leadership stuff. And you, you have a thing called dimensional leadership. I'll explain some of that, because I think that is a great, a great system. It's a great skills. It's, I really liked how you put the dimensional leadership up there. 23:27 Okay, so dimensional leadership starts with being able to say yes and no, as as a leader. So this present retreat is almost like a prerequisite. Is it in? Or is it out? And being able to be totally clear about that? And not feeling guilty? When the answer has to be No, okay? Because that's awareness of self. And that's awareness of the responsibility and accountability that we've taken in whatever our role is, and how we're showing up, whether that's at work, whether that's at home, whether that's in our community, wherever. So then you take that and once you are so solid in yourself, you can now actually really see and hear and seek to understand the people around you. But if we're unsure, and we're unclear, there's no we're we're working through a fog. So if I was unclear, Shawn, and I'm trying to listen to you, I have a much less chance of fully understanding and making the connection and getting the true information I need to be able to do whatever I need to do intentionally in our interaction. So removing that fog is key. So that's where the present retreat is a big part of it. And so it's like putting your so that first part is put your own mask on before you help anybody else. When you fly in a plane. That's what they tell you. And if you don't have a shirt, you can't give your own shirt away. You have to have your own shirt to be able to move forward and create something to be able to help somebody else get the shirt that they need. And so that is something that I think that's really hard. 25:00 hard to remember, as a leader, because there's a lot of there's a lot of judgment that comes both self and other. And so when we're talking about dimensional leadership, there's huge levels of awareness. And so that first one is, are we solid in ourself? And then what habits do we have? And what habits do those around us have? And can we use them for good? And if we can't use them for good, then we start thinking about how do we have to change them. But really, the ultimate piece of dimensional leadership is, every single time you add a person to the thought process, you're increasing awareness and increasing leadership, yourself, first, your business second, or your your responsibility to the business second, then the people that you work with side by side, the people you report to the people who report to you this any other stakeholders, every single time you do that you're adding this layer of awareness that when each one has clarity around it, and is built from a place of very clear intent. There is so much information that can be harnessed, there is so much opportunity that can be leveraged. And I find it comes with practice. That's what it is. It's practice. Yeah. And what do you think's the biggest? Like when you're out working with clients, you're out working with people? What do you think is the biggest issue right now, with leadership? People in leadership, I mean, I see people, the biggest problem that I see with working with people is, someone will get put in a leadership position, because they're a good at whatever it is that they're whatever, if they're an engineer, they're a good engineer. So now that makes you a good people person that makes you a good leader. And that's to me, I see that I see that more in corporate America than in anything that you get promoted, just because you're good at what you do. But what what do you see as some of the biggest problems with leadership on the people that you're working with? What came up first for me, was that we're all too tired. 27:04 And the reason we're tired especially now is we're having decision fatigue, are we doing what's right for ourselves? Is everybody that we're in touch with from the decisions that we're making going to be impacted by that? How do I then amplify that out to the people who report to me to the company that I'm supporting to the community that uses the product and all of those different things. So there's, there's a tiredness. And that's, that's part of it. I think another one, though, 27:36 is it comes back to awareness. And it's this, you were talking about promoting, for promoting because of performance, and not necessarily having all of the skills to do what needs to be done at that next level up. And I would say delegate versus dump is a big one. People talk about delegating, but really what they're doing is they're getting the things they don't like off their plate. And this happens in corporate America. And this happens in small business. This also happens in relationships. Oh my god. Yes. Don't tell my husband, my wife. Yeah, my wife. 28:11 I want to hear this story. Oh, I tend to dump 28:20 do see I we are both dumping grounds. And in fact, we've learned to we've learned who does what so we just stay at it, we get we have our own lanes. So there is no delegation and there is no dumping in our, in our marriage, there's Get out of my lane, or Hey, that's actually yours, it goes in your lane. See, I actually backup the dump truck to her lane and just 28:42 dump it all. Oh, Shawn. Oh, that's hilarious. Well, you know it, right. You know it. And I know, see, for me, I when I was first starting out, I dumped numbers, I forgot the governance part of business. And I was like, whatever things can happen, things are happening. It's all good. I was able to do more when I actually looked at it, right, it was being done, but I wasn't, I wasn't investing time or energy into it. And I think that's the difference in delegation is that we're, we must invest the time to know the purpose for the role, how it aligns to our how aligns to the work that we're trying to do. And having somebody that likes to do that work. And then actually being able to receive the work that has been completed to hear and be able to ask questions comes back to dimensional leadership, right? We can't know it all. So who are we going to put our attention and effort into so that they can put their attention and effort into creating what we need so we can use it effectively? Right? Yeah. And, you know, you talked about on the doing your retreats on Monday, do you by chance, I mean, what is your thought process on like doing weekly, or daily journals or daily 30:00 You know, the day planners type thing? Yeah, I personally, I have to have a day time I noticed when I don't do like a, if I don't plan out my day, before the day starts, I end up not doing anything. I have to I have to have that list. I've got to it's kind of like doing the retreat. It's like every day, I've got to sit down, it's okay. To I'm doing this at 3am doing this, because I don't I just get consumed by the crap of the day, you know, the buyers? Ah, here. Yeah, um, I am not a fan. my calendar is probably my best friend and my worst enemy. I'm pretty me personally. And so yes, part of a president retreat is actually looking at the weekend. What are the priorities for the week? What are the priorities for the rest of the quarter? What are the priorities for the rest of the year. And so then gets to look at what's going on each day. I refuse to do more than three big things in one day. Because there's a lot of little stuff I want to have to also have to fit in shows up that needs to be taken care of, sometimes things that I want to do. And so I limit myself to three priorities or initiatives I call I think in a day, I don't know I'm going back to the Stephen Covey, Boulder theory, I only have three boulders in a day. And that's going to be my biggest heaviest work that requires the most creativity that requires the most critical thinking that requires the most presence. And those are going to be the things that must get done and everything else is a bonus. 31:36 And one of the now one of the things I did want to bring up because I think it's such a great thing. But I want to talk about your podcast a little bit as well. And it is the bold business podcast that does a great, great, great podcast and I'm telling you, you've been you've been busy on that you do you have a lot of a lot of content out there a lot of great content out there as far as leadership and there's so much stuff out on that pocket. How is a doing a podcast? How's that been for for you? How's it 32:06 it turned into one of my boulders, Shawn, and just and then I had to discern it. Okay, so this was a backwards thing. Usually here it's in or it's out right? And you're ruthless that way. I was ruthless about figuring out how do you make it part of what we do here at redirection because it is my absolute hands down favorite thing to do with being guests on podcasts like yours, your end, all the shows that I've listened to, and the information that you're sharing is fantastic. And I come away with an at least one idea of some for something that I'm working on, in the near future or the day of as I'm listening. So that's fantastic. And you know, there's something to be said about just having conversation. So the way I started was I'm like, I kept talking to all these really cool people and getting really inspired. And they're telling me about these business problems that they've been grappling with. And I was like, I'm learning from this and inspired by it. Other people will be too, so I started recording them and sharing them in there came the podcast. Yeah, that's fantastic. It's a it's a great podcast. And I love the way that you have it on your homepage, by the way. That is Thank you, that is fantastic. I you I put the podcast at the bottom of your, your homepage. And for all the listeners, you know, we're going to there's gonna be links to your to your podcasts, there's gonna be links to your to your website, which is red direction.com. And the one of the things that you had on there was you had the the three step framework that will change both your relationships with meetings and with your team. What, what is that that is? And that's something that all the listeners can go and download and get this concept. All right, this concept for the three step framework to change your relationship with meetings is that none of us have enough time. So I'm I'm saying, Wow, wouldn't it be awesome if and I challenge you to take four hours a week in a row uninterrupted to have a president retreat, because it will change your business, because of all the things that will come up the way that you interface it will be uniquely your own to your workflow and style and companies initiatives. 34:09 But you need more time. And that's why I created this, this little book. And it's little it's short. It's only like 10 pages long, I think. And the purpose of it is to talk about what is a good meeting. How do you have a great meeting? And do you really need the meetings that you've got happening? No. I know. Do you know? Okay, so here I did this, right? I believe in walking the walk. So I come up with this thing. And I'm like, this is great. And I'm like, but I don't think I do it. So I put myself through the process. And I got rid of 25% of my meetings right off the bat. I 25% more time in my week by following my own advice. That's genius. 34:51 Sounds like oh my gosh, this works. And I will tell you, the team that works with me. They were like, oh, you're a little more accessible. Oh, you're responding to us a little faster. Oh, 35:00 This is so great. Yes, yes. And yes. So I mean, for years I was a, when people asked what I did for a living, I'd say, Well, I'm a professional meeting goer. 35:12 Oh, I know. And between the two, it's, you know, it was kind of up in the air. But yeah, it's a. So yeah, this, this framework, I think is fantastic. And how to be on time, right? We, we have unwritten agreements, Shawn, and like your inboxes, crazy, your professional meeting goer I've had both of those things happen to me, and they still happen to me. And so these are the types of things they're tools that we just get to rely on the information that you're sharing what you know, what the john Maxwell coaching programs do, what redirection is bringing to the table, all of these things are incredibly important to realize that you don't have to master them, we just have to know when we need them. Right. And I think that that's, I think that in itself is a science and an art. And there's mastery just in that. Yeah. And I've got all the listeners, everyone who listens to this, that there's absolute gold nuggets in what's being said, and go get that download, I'm telling you, if you get one out of any of this podcast, but if you get one thing that's going to help you save time, that's going to help you be better at what you do, it's gonna be better, it's gonna make you a better leader. 36:27 How long does it take to go through that? 36:29 I was gonna, let's see. Now, it'll take you about 15 minutes or so to read and digest. And it'll if you actually do what's suggested, it will, it will seem like it's adding time because you go into you have to analyze each meeting and go into each meeting with an intention. Right, like, so for our, our connection today, Shawn, I knew it was going to be a meeting that I didn't want to miss I wanted to be prepared for and I wanted to show up and have a great conversation with you. So I spent time going through what did we you know, what did I want to talk about making sure all the information was set? And how could I not only show up and share information? How do I show up and really support your work and what you were doing right? And that was my intention. And it took it took time at the beginning. But you know what, I feel so good about our conversation so far. I'm never gonna, I'm gonna get done and go, Oh, I wish I could have said 25 more things at the same point in time. I'm glad it's Wow, I wish I had never said that. 37:33 That's what this that's what this handout is really you know, this ebook. And this process is all about, because I don't want to I don't want to make people late for their next meetings, I want to be conscious and aware about value their time. Because when we let time slip, it just eats up like you said, if we don't have things on our calendar, 37:53 the day goes away. And we're like, What just happened? We did a lot of stuff. But what actually just happened today. And this allows us to be much more intentional about it. And you mentioned that you had some books pulled out what are what are three of your favorite books of all time. Okay, so I have I have books about growth. I have books about business, and I have books about decision making and strategy. Which group would you like? No, let me ask you this. What color sticky note is on each one of those? Oh, you know what? They're all the same color. They're all they're all like this teal blue? It's my Don't forget this sticky note. What is your favorite on growth? My favorite on growth? Okay, so I did bring three, I'm going to share this. My absolute positive favorite growth is children's book called giraffes can't dance. I've never heard of that book. And it's written by geils, Andrea and guy, Parker Reese. And it is the best book about coming back to what we were talking about with dimensional leadership. How do we show up as ourselves? How do we listen to what we actually have to bring to the table and then do it? Yeah. And everyone listening, I'm gonna put there's gonna be in the show notes. There's gonna be links to all these books. So that I think that's important that when any book is shared, that there's a link to people to be able to go find it. Yeah. Oh, good. I'm glad you're gonna do that, because I was gonna offer to send you links if it was helpful, because these are great ones. Um, and I don't even remember where we found this. But when I found it at a bookstore when my son was tiny, tiny, and when he grew out of it, it became it got added to my business library here in the office. 39:38 That's a book that grows with you. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Do you wanna hear the other two? Sure. Absolutely. The second one is called a question of values by Hunter Lewis. Great. This is something that helps us with our discernment, which helps us with our ruthlessness and it helps us with the prioritization because what we believe in 40:00 really drives, 40:02 really drives. And something that I talk about too is what you prioritize is what you value. And so it's really important to know what you value because if what you're prioritizing isn't what you value, there's a leak. And that leak is going to be draining and it's going to become heavy and hard, and we're not gonna be able to do what we need to do. Right. Right. And here's the third one. This was written by Diane Collins, it's called, do you quantum think? 40:28 Wow. Of the three Look at this. Of the three you can tell I This one is like within hands reach. It has water spilled on it, there's a coffee stain or two on the inside. 40:39 This one was back when I had star sticky notes for a while. Have you ever seen those giant sticky notes? Oh, yes. I'm so glad I don't have them because they don't fit into anything. 40:52 Your wall? they're grateful. 40:54 Oh, I don't I don't want anything on my wall. That would be a little overwhelming to me. 41:04 This and so quantum thing. Um, they, they're they're basically just saying all the time. Can you look at this from a different perspective? Can you look at this from a different perspective. So the reason the reason it's so well loved is because it's something that when I need when I need to look at something a different way. And I feel stuck in the moment, or especially during my present retreats, outcomes, this book, and I will just open it to a page and I will start reading. And then I'll be like, Okay, good. That was what I needed. And I can look at this. And it doesn't matter what page of the book it is, I can look at whatever I'm stuck on in a different way. And it'll help me move forward. So those are my three growth books. That's fantastic. And I know about one of those I don't know about the the first one or the last one. So I'm gonna, that's those are two books that I'm definitely going to check out. But just I absolutely want to thank you for being on the podcast you you've added so much value to my listener tonight. So I really do appreciate your time and all of your knowledge. I absolutely love it when when people have a passion for something. And you hear it all the time with people go go an inch wide and a mile deep. And people who just dive into what they're passionate about and do what they love. It's just it to me, I get so much out of doing a podcast with like you it's like I get to talk to so many amazing people that are so dedicated and what they do in such a great niche that that fits them. Perfect. So thank you, thank you so much. And and I know that the listeners are going to get tremendous amount of value from what you shared with us today. So thank you very much. I'm so glad to have been here today with you, Sean. Thank you. Well, I want to thank just for being on the podcast today. And be sure to go to the show notes and go. I'm gonna have links to the books that we talked about. There's links to her podcast, the bold business podcast, and make sure you go to a read. Make sure you go to her website red direction, calm. And again. It was absolutely fantastic. Having just on the podcast today

Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. Today we have a special guest Gayla Scrivener. We have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to the podcast, and at some point we have to make the decisions to start outsourcing US. The time comes where we have to start working on our business and not in our businesses. One of those area's is content marketing and that is one of the areas that Gayla's company takes care of. Gayla is a close friend with a great story and company, and like most successful entrepreneurs, she gave the proverbial FU to the traditional working life and created a career that she could do from anywhere in the world. Today we are thinking big on how to let stuff go and start outsourcing yourself. Connect with Gayla Scrivener at the following social media link: Website http://scrivenersolutions.com/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ScrivenerSolutions/ Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaylascrivener/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gscrivener/ Podcast https://www.gaylascrivener.com/category/podcast/ Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until next week, remember to always think big Ratings and reviews directly impact search rankings for the Thinking Big Podcast. So please help us get more ratings and reviews. Leaders are Readers, here are some free books for you to get. Free copy of Think and Grow Rich http://bit.ly/free-think-and-grow-rich-ebook The 7-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge https://bit.ly/tagrchallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible Episode Transcription: 0:00 Welcome to the thinking big podcast. Today, we have a special guest, gala Scrivener. Now we have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast. And at some point, we have to make the decision to start outsourcing us and start outsourcing all the stuff that we do because as entrepreneurs, we start off doing everything. The time comes where we have to start working on our business, instead of in our business. And one of those key areas is content marketing. And this is one of the areas that galas company takes care of. Now gala is a close friend, she's got a great story and company. And like most successful entrepreneurs, she gave the proverbial f due to the traditional working life and created a career that she could do from anywhere in the world. So today, we are thinking big on how to let stuff go and start outsourcing ourselves. 1:26 Well, I want to welcome gala Scribner to the podcast today. I have been looking forward to this because I think we're in an environment. Now, you know, the biggest one of the biggest things I see is people starting a side gig, you know, and it's, it happened before, you know, before this COVID crap and before this pandemic crap, but I think it's going to be forced, and even more and more to where people have a side gig, you know, they have a side business that they're trying to do an online business that they're trying to do. And, to me, every household is going to have one and talking to people that I you know, that I work with. And then I know, the biggest complaint that I get from people is they don't know how they don't have time, they don't have the energy to be doing all the social media stuff, they just don't know, they don't have the tools they don't, and you get burned out. You know, I know people I don't want to post every day or I don't want to post every other day. And really, that's what you do, give me a little bit give us a little overview of how you kind of started what you did, and what drove you to kind of create what you're doing now? 2:39 Well, you'll have to remind me to get back to the social media part. And I want to first I guess, lead with that, that everything that we're doing in an online business, everything that we do in business period, is building relationships and nurturing relationships. And when you think of social media, and oh my gosh, I've got to post every day or I don't want to do this and we're getting the tasks kind of in the way and it fogs us that ultimately what we're doing is just needing to connect with people and and serve serve those folks. But it takes it took me a while to kind of understand that and circling way back in the Wayback years I I have been an entrepreneur for just a short amount of time, really. Back in 2012 is when I took the leap, left corporate life and jumped both feet in to start Scrivener solutions. And I had been in the medical management field for 20 years, right out of right out of high school my first year or so into college. I landed a job at an ophthalmology office. And believe it or not, I I was majoring in marketing at the time in college. This young 19 year old I'm going to be a marketing major. And I soon realized or told myself, I could never sell anything. I'm not a marketer. I'm going to change my degree to Business Administration and I stayed in medical management from this. I went in as this bright eyed fresh 19 year old in an ophthalmology office and was filing their charts and calling and confirming appointments. And then and then going to school part time or full time school part time job and then not three months later the A medical biller went on maternity leave. And why the office manager and the doctor decided to put this little 19 year old in the billing seat, I have no idea. But that's what happened. I, I, I did the medical billing, I learned that just by just by doing. And it was so many years ago, the only electronic claims we had was to Medicare. And I knew I was responsible for the backups. And we had backup tapes that looked like eight track cassette tapes. And we had seven of them, and I had to switch them out. And I took one home in my purse and everything like that I didn't really understand all of that. But I learned just by doing and the lady never came back for from her maternity. So I, I was their medical biller, and then I was recruited to be in another office and, and then my, my I, I worked in the industry for 20 years. And then my daughter was graduating high school. And honestly, I just became burnt out burnt out with the whole industry, just tired of all the red tape and you want to help patients. But every one of them has different insurance. And there's it's such a game. And I became I guess, jaded by the whole process. And I wanted something different. And I was tired of being tethered to a particular location. And the but that's all I knew. And that's all my whole family knows, we've only known that you go work for somebody. And no one in my family was really an entrepreneur, no one. And I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. And the company that I was working for my last, my last corporate gig was managed managing medical imaging company, and we had MRI centers in different parts of the country. And that company was closing. And so I'm like, Okay, I need to find another job. But see, I was director of operations and the, the head guy said, Hey, stay, help clean up this mess or close things down. So I stayed to the very bitter end. And that was a horrendous type of 7:40 process. Because you have to let people go, you have to talk with vendors that the company can't pay, you have to sell MRI equipment that you have no idea how it got into the building to begin with higher cranes, higher construction, and it's just, it was such a big job of closing the company down and it was emotionally hard. But I knew that I did not want to find another job. I wanted something different. And we I had decided like maybe it's time, maybe it's time to do something different. Well, my husband and I we love to camp and we like to, to just explore. And that's just what we do. We we can drive aimlessly, we can just like to go to all these little nooks and crannies. And about that time in about 2011 he was saying let's get a little camper so we can camp and do little weekend things and I looked at him and I said why not be cool if we could just live in an RV, like full time and just meander around and have a job or we could just work from anywhere. It did not take him but two seconds for him to start researching and we because we still had that corporate job our intent was Alright, we're gonna find a place to go we we ended up selling everything we had. So that we downsized and we bought a 38 foot motorhome and Alfa see diesel pusher. And in 2011 we moved into that vehicle full time. And that was like okay, the safety net type thing is is breaking because I was still working for that company. And I needed to go to different parts of the country to close down right where I centered well Instead of me flying back and forth from the home office to, you know, to another part of the country, Monday through Friday, then go back for the weekends, like my husband's a musician and, and his schedule is very flexible. It's like, you know what I'd rather us be together and let's just go to take the RV. And we were renting in Florida at the time. And it's like, I have no, I have no desire to stay or buy property in Florida. So we have our RV, like, we sold everything. We're living in the RV, let's just go. And that last few months that I was with the corporate life, we were in the RV. But then I was like, Okay, what am I going to do? Like, what kind of job Can I have? And I, I found in research because I had been in an industry for 20 years. That's all I knew. I didn't know, I had no idea of the wonderful ways people can earn a living and have freedom and have just love what they do. And I, in research on what kind of company can I create? What can I do? I came across the word virtual assistant. And I was like, Huh, what is this, and reading the job description and all of that it was like, Well, I do all of that stuff. Now anyway. And I haven't really seen my boss in the years that I worked for him, maybe five or six times in person. So I'm kind of like his virtual manager, right? So I can do this, I can do this. So I should have in hindsight, I started growing my side business. Before I like, jumped off. And that is the biggest thing. But seeing that I had this, I had this weird mindset. I had this mindset that if I were to, if I were to work on my business, even though the company I was working for the time involved, was hard, but it wasn't as long. 12:20 I had the time to get started on it, I could make the time, right, I can make it a priority. But somehow if I was working on something for myself, I was cheating. The company I was working for weird, the weird thing. And I had never known to like, work on something and build something for myself. But I waited until the job was completely done. Before I really really hit the ball rolling and I started networking, when just getting my, my my face out there because the only people that I knew were in the medical industry. And I I didn't know what kind of businesses were out there. So in we went back to Missouri to be our home base. That's where my husband and I had grown up. And we we went to start start our business. And at first it was a virtual assistant business because I would work on practically anything that small business would need. And it was just me and freelancing. And then I soon realized that most folks need help talking with their clients, their prospects, and just the cold communication. And all of that entails on what does your website look like? Well, I like working on websites, so I helped him with that. Then social media and being consistent in that email publications, direct mail newsletters, all 14:13 there, there's 14:15 podcasts, there's videos, there's all this the publications that we do and content marketing and the more I studied on marketing my own business and making connections and how I could scale my communication I'm already doing face to face networking, well, how do I What are effective ways to stay in contact right with folks and that was through social media and through through emails and in some of my clients do direct mail, newsletters and things like that. And I soon grew a team to lead a virtual team and I recently just Shout out, it's like, you know, we don't do general virtual assistant where we do content marketing tasks, we take the burden off of the the hundreds of details that are involved in getting our getting seen out in the virtual world out in the digital world. So what my team and I do with Scrivener solutions, we take that burden off. And a lot of our clients have to do everything themselves. I relate to that I did everything myself at first. And, but there's stages, it's like, okay, I want to implement a social media plan, for example, right and go back to to where we first started, oh, my goodness, it's such a pain to be talking or to be out there on social media, I can relate social media, we do that. And we do it a lot in Scrivener solutions. But for me personally, there's one platform that I like to be in, because it's fun. The other platforms I'm in, and I do engage in, but I have helped with that. But it wasn't always that way. Right. And at first, when it was just me, myself and I, in my company, what I would do is schedule time to just block off time and spend an hour. And think of what I'm going to post for the next week or two, just pre think, you know, what am I What am I want to say? And is there something that inspires me? And? And is there a cute post, and I would just get into the habit of I need a post, excuse me a post today, right? And that just worked that muscle, it's like, Okay, I have the consistency, people are seeing me out there. And I had I was involved in in that local networking group. And I also would post into there that group on a consistent basis. And even though and it was mainly Facebook, I did have a LinkedIn, I thought of LinkedIn at the time as simply an online resume. Right. And I wasn't there at first. And I think that I mean, we see folks that have been doing it a long time, and they're everywhere, literally everywhere. But they didn't start that way. So when you're first starting out, or if it's just an office of you, it's okay to be active in one place, find something that that you can be active in and then think ahead, train yourself to think ahead and, and schedule to use a scheduling tool in Facebook, we just schedule right there on on the on the page. And then you can use other other tools buffer Hootsuite or any other third party tools for other things. And so I started with Facebook, and then I would add in at the time, Twitter and then LinkedIn and I did similar posts, but I scheduled them out. And so then I was on three platforms. And at the time was five days a week I at that time, I chose not to post on the weekends in that manner. I would do like organic ones or scheduled ones. 18:46 And not long after that I hired Sharon to be on my team. And she is my social media manager. She She leads all of our social media and I got her into the routine and training her like this is what I want on that. And we soon we're doing the same thing for clients and helping them find their voice and everything like that, to get that baseline and see for my social media, my baseline being out there that branding part of it to be present. My team does that for me. Thank heavens, you know, like for for my blog posts for my podcast for any video or whatever that needs to be publicized. I'm not worrying about Okay, I got to get it on social media. My team already knows that. So that's, that's something to where I found that the value of the details of what am I going to say when I can hire Sharon, who's literally she was a cheerleader for the Tampa Bay Rays years ago. So she is my cheerleader on my team and she is fantastic. Stick of, you know, cheering me on. And I love how she does our social posts. And my clients. I mean, our clients, they love that because it's like, we're on our client side, and we draw things out that our clients are to maybe bashful, right? Are they? posting on social media? I think sometimes we feel boastful. 20:26 Now do you? Do you think it takes some time to get used to either the client what you're posting, or you're getting comfortable posting for a client, knowing how they think and knowing how, because everyone kind of has their feel their, you know, their, their, how they talk? Is it? How long does it take you to kind of really meld with a customer to start posting in their behalf? Because I know, that's a scary thing for me to think about. 20:57 Well, the the thing is, and what I had found is, you know, we we learn from, and I don't want to call this a mistake, but what I've had a lot of learning opportunities, and there are I have been too anxious maybe to take on a social media client, because that's where they're at is only social media, they're not creating what I call a core piece of content, a core piece of content is either a blog post, a podcast, or a video, what is that main message that you're going to be right? You know, expressing. And without that, see, with that main message, let's say, I have a life coach for a client, for example, and she does a weekly video. Well, for us, we can help her work up that video to get on her podcast. And then we would disseminate that out through email and through social, but we can draw things out, 22:01 right? So you're you're actually she says, right, so you're actually taking content from someone that they have something that they've done and reusing that same stuff on multiple platforms, multiple technology, from blogs, to, you know, post to this. 22:18 And that's really what social media is, is, is sharing our ideas and beliefs. And if you don't have it on your website, or in your videos, then, you know, how can you hire somebody to share what you have, right? So and it does take time, though we do have different types of clients, we have an association where we want to make sure and we don't know, the association leader will review the social posts before we publish them. Because sometimes we may I say something not not not disrespectful, but we may highlight a non member not knowingly, right, or something like that, whatever the rules were laid. But we also want to make sure that our clients have a look and feel, but we have an approval process. And a lot of times within three months, there is a level of comfort that they say, you know what, I don't even want to look at these anymore. I want to focus on this other stuff. Because if something comes out, and they say, you know, I don't really like that image, or I really don't like that. We can delete it. Yeah, you know, but that it does take communication. And I am really big on having that communication with our clients. I've had some early on clients that wanted us to take care of their social platform of choice. And we struggled so much because it was like they they just dump the work. You know, they said here, do it. And then they disappeared. It's like, we don't even know you very well. And then you look at their website. And they're so inactive. So I won't even take a client anymore unless they believe in the power of content marketing and want to want to want to go through that process of sticking their neck out for other people to get to know them because they know that if they set you know broadcast their message in one way, whether it's video audio, or the written word that they will attract followers. And then what we do in the in the in the back office, you know behind the scenes, is we help hold up their platform, because we're taking care of all of those little tiny details. Write, so that they can focus on their message. And that we can push their buttons, I like to say we like to push our clients, but 25:08 that is so big and also multiple platforms it's so for me, for instance, I don't get a lot of information, I don't do a lot of blogs, I don't. I don't go to blogs, to learn stuff many people do. And that's why I think it's so important to do things on multiple platforms, because I get my stuff from from podcasts, I do a lot of stuff with podcast and, but I know a lot of people that don't listen to podcasts, they will, they would rather go to a blog, they would rather go to these other platforms. And if you can affect efficiently, get content out on multiple, the same content, reuse the same stuff on multiple platforms. That is that is absolutely huge. And the thing is, I'm not good at blogs, I would need to hire you to go and do stuff like that, because that's just not where I'm, that's not my forte, that's not where I'm at. But it's very critical that that platform gets used as well. 26:03 And there's what I like to do for podcasts, what I do for my podcast is I record it, and then I summarize it for the show notes. And then it's also on my website as a blog post with an embedded, you know, an embedded recorder or audio player. So it helps with also with SEO, and sometimes sometimes I'll draw out, it's like, I had this content that if I did it a little bit different way. And like did a tutorial, that's another piece of content, it's basically the same thing, but I did a video of showing something on let's say MailChimp, and I just dove right in and, and showed on MailChimp and I had like a tutorial video. 26:56 And then 26:59 I posted that on YouTube, then I also posted a little brief description on my website, embedded the video, but then I had off of that video another piece of content, which was some people really like checklist instead of watching the video they want to go through. And so it's like, all I have to do is make a blog post with a little images of the exact steps. And that's a separate one with a little downloadable printable, you know, print pretty version of the steps, right? It's basically an operating procedure of how to do whatever. So for me, I'm, and that's just duplicating it, and you have a little bit different titles, and then you can do some things with your key words, on the blog post. But also from the social media standpoint. It we like it that we can have a an audio piece. And we can direct people to the podcast to if it's a libsyn link, if it is an iTunes link, something like that, and say, Hey, that just broadcasts that a new episode, then we can go in a little deeper and then and draw something out of the episode that would appear on the blog post and point the person to the blog post with the embedded audio player. So that's more than one opportunity to say the same thing in different ways. And you're drawing out the ideas and and that's what we like to do is take that core piece of content and dissect it, I guess you can say 28:50 and God that is so important in it. And I didn't even realize that until maybe a year or so ago that how you can reuse the same content in different ways to absolutely hit a much bigger, bigger audience. Absolutely. That's that is a that's probably one of the biggest learnings I've had in the last couple years is to reuse that because it's hard to come up with content. Good core content is for me is hard to come out with. So it's like, man, if I can reuse that, especially if I can have someone else do that because I'm just not adept at that. That is that is absolutely fantastic. 29:25 And another tool that we just started using it's called headliner. And are you familiar with? 29:33 Yeah, love headline. Yeah, 29:34 I like that, that you know, you just have an image it does a pull out a little clip. And that's a different type of social posts. And it makes your social feed. Interesting, right. And we use you wear all the time experiment and I love what we do because we have different our different clients. You different tools. So we are introduced to different things. And a lot of our clients come to us and they, they use our systems, you know, they, that's what they come to. And that's why I shifted from being a virtual assistant company, as more general administrative stuff, to focus on content marketing, because we have created systems in our company, we've experimented and we actually use, I let my staff loose on my website on my stuff for Scrivener solutions website, and for the gala, scrivener.com website. For both of those, that's our playground, to where if you break it, that's okay. But you know, we're in and following a lot of content marketing news, and what's trending and what should we do? And sometimes our clients are not ready for that, you know, or they feel terrible, because they're not in that, that space, it's like, you know, you don't have to be you need to it all, all. Content Marketing is and another word for it is, is relationship marketing. Yeah, we just need to take a deep breath and just say, How do I communicate to folks? And how can I communicate to whoever you hire, whatever team you build, to help you communicate your message. So that you can be more effective and have more reach, you know, 31:39 and I, you know, going back to your story, and that's one of the things that I, you know, from, from an entrepreneur standpoint, that I absolutely love about your story, and all the stuff that you're doing is, you didn't have a huge grand plan, you didn't have a huge grand idea of your ultimate goal of where you are today, you know, had you tried to think of back then of what you're doing today, you would have not, would have not started you have not going it's that I just love the story of you making the decision. Moving forward, what's the next thing I can do to progress to my dream, which is the freedom which that that is, and to me, that is so, so big that so many people want is that freedom. And what's funny is now, not only have you done that, and you've created that, you know that the true entrepreneur, you started your company, you did this, but what you're doing is actually helping other entrepreneurs, kind of do the same thing. Because we don't understand a lot of that stuff. We don't we're not doing that stuff. We're not the expert to that stuff. But you actually use the system develop the system to help other people use the system. 32:58 That's fantastic. 32:59 I, I am so what lights me up is the ability to work from anywhere. And I find that just an awesome opportunity that each and every one of us have. And you were saying, you know, I think that there's going to be there's more and more people trying to do this side gig, right, you know, from and, and they wish that they could do it full time, or they don't have enough time to do this. They don't have enough time, you know, we we will find enough time to do the things that we really want to do. And and it will it shifts, but there is uncertainty. And there will be something that happens that you say no more. And I'll have to be honest. I mean, the more years that I'm in this, it's like there is no I jokingly say, the more years that I'm an entrepreneur, the less employable I am. I mean, I am so unemployable I just nobody will want me to hire me for their company and I don't want to go Yeah, because I want to have I want to be able to have my office anywhere in the world that I want. If I wanted to move to Colorado for three months, just because I want to and or if I want to have I mean what's big for for my husband and I is that we have nomadic stents. We may be going for four to six weeks and we will now we don't drive around our our big beast is what we call it the 38 foot diesel pusher. We travel even smaller. We travel in our 98 Jeep Cherokee with a rooftop tent. We have solar we have a little refrigerator. And we live out of that for four to six weeks at a time. And we are nomadic. And we, we want to go on roads, where that 38 foot RV will not go, right. And we have gone on so many adventures. And we get so excited. And it's a challenge for us. We're in the middle of, of nowhere. And it's like, oh my gosh, we've got 4g, oh, stay right here. Let's 35:28 Don't move, don't move. 35:29 We're gonna stay here for three days. All right. And we'll we'll work or we were in hot springs, North Carolina, just outside of, of they're just a tiny little town. Beautiful, beautiful. And we're we're going across to a little area in Tennessee, we've stayed there for almost a week. And we had absolutely no service. So we had to pack up every day, go to the little tiny library in town, and we'd work and then we drive back and in pop up the the rooftop tent. And doing that we could stay home and do the same routine and be really stressful about how our business is going. But each time because every time we would go, I'd be stressed out, oh my gosh, we're gonna be going on this, this thing and I'm not prepared. Well, we're never prepared fully for anything in life. So we just we had our deadline, we were gonna go. And we learn more from what we want to do and how we want to grow our business. On those trips, right, and our business has grown every time that we've done that we found what our priorities are, what, what makes us more passionate, and, you know, it shaped our decisions, but in roughing it for four to six weeks. And and we are it takes a little while but we are preparing for a bigger nomadic trip. And so we're laying that foundation now on how our business should run. And we challenge ourselves to say, Okay, we've got to shake things up. There's a and, and challenge ourselves and get out of our regular routine. Otherwise, we're going to be the woulda, coulda, shoulda, people, right. And so I get fired up that I love that we have the opportunity to work from anywhere. And it bothers me that you have to clock in people, so many people, I just have to clock in and, and they're I don't know, I have these, these reflections of the old Dunkin Donuts commercials of the guy hunched over shoulders like time to make the donuts, you know, and I'm used to feel that way when I'd go to work. And now I don't it's an adventure every day. And I love to hope to have the, you know, help my clients to where they can have the freedom that they want whatever they they want. And if helping them with the details of social media and website updates and, and sending out emails, helps them achieve their goals. I love being behind the scenes to make them look good. And in being in you know, sometimes it's hard and sometimes I've had these fleeting thoughts of, Okay, I want to go back I it's just too hard. You know, this build is has come and this payment has not come so. And it's I think sometimes I feel like I'm on a I don't know if this is a thing, but it's their entrepreneurial bipolarism that's one day I can be on top of the world the other day, it's just like Dang. But it's every year it gets better and better. And it just things are are so great. And I had a moment of I am so glad I am and free of working the corporate life because I was about almost three years ago. So my, my older brother he he was very, very ill. He's been very ill for a long time. But it was at a point that family needed to come and I could drop everything and take my parents to Chicago and we were there with my brother We were there with him in the hospital and my 70 year old parents from, from the country to that, when they're worried about their son, right to drive in Chicago traffic, that's just terrible. So I had an email, I was able to

Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. This episode is part 9 of a special 14 day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. Today we are going over the 11th step to success, the step on The Subconscious Mind - The connecting link. This is probably my favorite chapter I recently hosted a live 14 days Think and Grow Rich challenge that benefited Feeding America and I thought it would be great to put the challenge right here on the podcast. So for 14 days I will be releasing a new podcast and the associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps of Think and Grow Rich plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. It doesn't matter if you have ever read the book or not, the challenge is designed for anyone to do. There is a link in the show notes so you can sign up for free and get download all of the challenge worksheets and a PDF copy of the original Think and Grow Rich Today we are thinking big on The Subconscious Mind. The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. https://www.sean-osborn.com/14daychallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching Website http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until tomorrows challenge, remember to always think big Ratings and reviews directly impact search rankings for the Thinking Big Podcast. So please help and rate and review the podcast. Episode Transcription: Welcome to the thinking big podcast. This episode is part nine of a special 14 day think and grow rich challenge today. We're going over the 11th step of success. The step on the subconscious mind, the connecting link, and this is probably my favorite chapter in the book. I recently hosted a live 14 day think and grow rich challenge that benefited feeding America. And I thought it would be great to just throw this out here on the podcast for everybody to listen to. So for 14 days I will be releasing a new podcast and the associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps in think and grow rich plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. It doesn't matter if you've ever read the book or not. This challenge is designed for anybody to do. There are links in the show notes, so you can go sign up for free and get the downloads of all of the challenge worksheets, plus a free PDF copy of the original think and grow rich book. So today we are thinking big on the subconscious mind. (01:30): Hello and welcome to tonight to night is God. It's one of my favorite chapters in the book. It is the chapter in the step on the subconscious mind, such a powerful step, such, such fun. I can't wait for tonight. So like always, we're going to start off with a few quotes that align with the subconscious before we get into it. The first one is Ralph Waldo Emerson. Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your promotion. Wallace D waddles, the power, which is in you is in the things around you. And when you begin to move forward, that things will arrange themselves for your advantage. And we, you know, I don't want to get too geeky on this, but I kind of want to get a little geeky on the subconscious mind. We went into it a little bit on an earlier chapter, but I wanted to really dive in again a little bit into the subconscious mind and the vastness of it and the power of it. (02:36): Because once you truly understand the power of the subconscious, how much it can really do, and that you have the ability to turn anything over to it, you can have it working on whatever you want it, whatever you want it to be working on, you could absolutely have it worked on everything. So we're going to go back into just a little bit of the, you know, the subconscious and the conscious. Again, most of us know what this consciousness subconscious mind is. Most of the people, you know, watching this are, are pretty aware with the personal development, but the subconscious mind opera operates at about 4 billion bits per second. And that is absolutely astonishing compared to the 2000 bits per second, that our conscious mind works at. You know, our conscious mind is only aware of one half of 1000000th of a percent of what the subconscious mind can do. (03:29): If you think about it, your subconscious mind, every second takes in 8 billion bits, it's doing 8 billion bits. Every second, it would take 8,000 novels to write 4 billion zeros. It's just amazing on what your subconscious can do, and you have the ability to turn over anything you want to it. You can program your subconscious mind to kind of do anything. And like we talked about the self driving car, you know, and in three months, you know, you turned over, you programmed your subconscious mind pretty much how to drive by itself. You know, you no longer consciously drive, unless you're 16, you no longer consciously drive. You're driving through your subconscious mind. And you were able to program that into your subconscious. And if you look at cars nowadays, you know, the Tesla, you know, the latest in engineering is, is developing, you know, self driving cars. (04:31): You know, they've got, it's loaded with computers, sensors all the way around the car cameras, all the way around the car. It has to know all these different things going on. What's coming from behind. What's in front of you, how fast you're going. Are there any percent pedestrians, what does that sign say? All of this stuff that, that those computers have to see, recognize and do something with. And you did that automatically. So if you think about, if you can program your subconscious mind to do that without even really knowing that you did it, or even trying to do it, if we tried to program our subconscious mind with positive things and with the things that we want, what do you think it could do with that? (05:13): What do you think it could do with the things (05:16): Really wanted to program? What would you program your mind to do if you knew it could do it? What would you program your mind to do when you see, you can turn over what ever you want to your subconscious mind. And it's through the, you know, that the habits that we do, it's like driving. Once you drive every day, you by habit, you automatically program your subconscious mind, as well as affirmations and auto suggestions. You have step that we've gone over. And again, it doesn't have to be true or false or fake or real, whatever you turn over, it's going to work on positive or negative. And the subconscious mind receives it Biles. And it remembers all since impressions or thoughts and by impressions, I mean, everything that you sense, whether it's from your five senses, whether you, whatever, you see, whatever you hear, whatever you feel, whatever you taste, whatever you smell, every sense impression or thought that you've ever had is actually in your subconscious mind. (06:13): It's stored all of that, regardless of its nature, positive, negative. It doesn't matter. It is stored all of that. And when people tell me, you know, and for a long time, I was like, I have a crappy memory. I can't remember shit. I just can't remember anything. We don't have memory problems. Cause again, it stores everything. What we have is we have a retrieval problem. We don't know. We don't know how to go in and retrieve the stuff that's there. And you can really be voluntarily plant in your subconscious mind, any plan, any thought or any purpose, which you desire to translate into its physical or monetary equivalent, whatever you want to put in there to do. It's like programming computer. If I want to program a computer to do Excel, boom, I'm going to run Excel and it's going to, that's what it's going to do so we can do whatever we want to do. (07:06): We can program, have what we want. And we are living daily in the myths of thousands and thousands of impulses from our five senses that are coming in and reaching our subconscious mind without even our knowledge. If you look at advertising, you know, again, pictures, boom, they go kind of right in without, you know, it was consciously, you know, looking at and evaluating those, but advertising stuff with, you know, social media, all the things you're seeing in your hearing, all of these things are happening every second, every day, without you even knowing about it, it's just automatic. Again, your conscious, aware of one half of one, millionth of a percent of all the sense impressions that you're getting. You're only aware of the things that you're, that you truly, that you've trained yourself to be aware of. And some of these impulses are negative and some of these impulses are positive and a great deal of them are negative. (08:02): And from now on, you know, part of what this chapter's about from now on try to help shut off the flow of any negative impulses and aid in a voluntary influencing of your subconscious mind through positive impulses of desire. A Raymond Charles Barker has a, has a fantastic quote on this. And he says, it takes as much hard mental work to fail as it does to succeed. Failure is actually a success negative. And for me, what he's saying there is he saying, if we have failure, we've just been successful at thinking the negative. It works, regardless of what, if you think positive, you're going to get positive for such to think negative. So when we fail, we're actually, it's actually a, it's a success. We, we we've, we've succeeded at being negative. So by changing your, your thought habits and in trying to focus positive things into our subconscious mind, what we're doing is we're able actually to possess the key that really unlocks the door to our entire subconscious mind, you know, further, you will control that door so completely. (09:12): If you do this, that no undesirable thought will be able to influence you or get into your subconscious mind when you get to that point where you can just turn off in it, you hear some Nope, Nope. Negative. Nope. Not gonna hear it. Nope. You've gotta be able to turn that off. And remember it is equally, you know, influenced your subconscious is equally influenced by negative thoughts that we just allow in. We just automatically allow negative thoughts in, and it's when I go back and I say, you know, anybody can think and grow rich, but what do we normally do most of us think and grow poor because the negative thoughts and for me, here's the thing, a positive and a negative emotion for me cannot occupy my mind at the same time. I don't think it's possible for anybody. If you, if you have a positive emotion, you cannot, at the same time, have a negative emotion. (10:03): And for me, a single negative thought or emotion is sufficient to block my mind and me from helping me achieve my goal, a single negative thought, I can't do that. I'm not good enough. Who do I think I am? All these things. A single negative thought can actually stop me, stop the motivation, stop the persistence, stop the desire to do it. And the subconscious mind is absolutely more susceptible to influence when it is mixed with emotions. And that's part of what's in this book is when we mix our thoughts with emotions, it is much more resonant to us. It, the feeling emotion by those, you, it is just so much more powerful when we actually put our thoughts and we put emotions, emotions with it. So it think about it. If you are having a thought, I want to do this, you know, this is, I want this goal right here. (11:05): And you mix that with love, or you mix that with a sexual desire. You mix it with one of these positive emotions, your desire to go and, and it makes it much more real in your subconscious mind when you mix it with an emotion, whether positive or negative. And in fact, there, there is evidence that only emotional thoughts have any influence on the subconscious mind. So we need to strive to mix our thoughts all the time with only positive emotions. Sometimes we do it sometimes negative or good. Sometimes I like, I hate to say it, but sometimes they get like when you, when you want to get bingettes or when you're mad at someone, does that not drive your thoughts a little bit more? It's not the correct way to do it, but you can see that when you have negative emotions, it motivates you to do stuff even more. (11:54): So we try to do them with positive, only emotion, and you're not going to be successful with, with negative emotions, but you can see where that leads. And in the book, he talks about seven major positive emotions and seven major negative emotions. And the positive emotions that he talks about are desire. Faith, you know, paint that you can do. It love sexual, longing, enthusiasm, romance, hope when you mix your thoughts and ideas with those, they become much more powerful. And he says, you know, there's seven, you know, seven major negative emotions is fear, jealousy, hatred, revenge, greed, superstition, anger. So just as one more positive, one more work negative on our subconscious mind. And so thinking back, I want you to think back over the last 30 to 60 days, and I want you to estimate what percentage of your emotions were positive and what percent of your emotions were negative. (12:52): Think back 30 to 60, 30, 60 days, you know, how many, how much of your thoughts were actually positive and how many were actually, and again, if you're honest, they're going to be, they're probably going to be more negative than they are positive. And what were the most when you're looking at those, you know, what were the most notable, positive thoughts that you had? If you go back over your positive, which ones are notable and the same thing for negative thoughts out of all the negative thoughts that you have, what are the negative ones that were most notable in your, in, in all the thoughts you have, you see patterns in those, in both your positive and your negative. And what I want you to do is I want you to list three specific steps that you can do to avoid the negative emotions in the future three steps. (13:36): What can you do to eliminate or to stop a Boyd, negative emotions in the future? You, what are three things you can do? And that is actually the challenge for today. So however, you're getting this, whether it is, you know, live right now with video or at a later time, you're watching it go. There's always going to be a link to go and download the challenge, go and download the challenge for the day and fill it out. It can be a very beneficial thing for you to do so here, here it is. Fill it out. It's going to have you go through this. How do you visualize it? Have you put some feeling in with it? So until tomorrow I will see you guys later.

Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. This episode is part 8 of a special 14 day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. Today we are going over the 7th step to success, the step on Decision - The mastery of procrastination. I recently hosted a live 14 days Think and Grow Rich challenge that benefited Feeding America and I thought it would be great to put the challenge right here on the podcast. So for 14 days I will be releasing a new podcast and the associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps of Think and Grow Rich plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. It doesn't matter if you have ever read the book or not, the challenge is designed for anyone to do. There is a link in the show notes so you can sign up for free and get download all of the challenge worksheets and a PDF copy of the original Think and Grow Rich Today we are thinking big on decisions. The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. https://www.sean-osborn.com/14daychallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching Website http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until tomorrows challenge, remember to always think big Ratings and reviews directly impact search rankings for the Thinking Big Podcast. So please help and rate and review the podcast. Podcast Transcription: 0:00 Welcome to the thinking big podcast. Today is Part Eight of a special 14 day thinking Grow Rich challenge. And today, we're going over the seventh step to success, the step on decision, the mastery of procrastination. I recently hosted a live 14 day thinking Grow Rich challenge, and I thought it would be great to put this right here on the podcast for anybody to listen to. So for 14 days, I will be releasing a new podcast, and the associated challenge that comes with each of the 13 steps in thinking Grow Rich, plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. And it does not matter if you've ever read the book or not. This challenge is designed for anybody to do. There are links in the show notes so you can sign up for free. Get the download to the challenge worksheets, even a free PDF copy of the original book thinking grow rich. So today, we are thinking big on decision. 1:26 Hello, and welcome to the chapter on decision. This is the mastery of procrastination. It's the seventh step to success. And we're going to start off again, like always with some great quotes from other great minds that have to do with decision making and the importance of it. Raymond Charles marker success and failure are the result of the use of mind. Every success motivated mind has been a decisive mind. Every failure motivated mind has been an indecisive, indecisive mind. Wallace D. Wattles act now is never anytime but now. And there will never be any other time. But now, Tony Robbins, Don't ever leave the moment without making the decision. JOHN Maxwell, inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail deficiency in decision making ranks much higher than the lack of specific knowledge or technical know how, as an indicator of leadership failure. And tonight's challenges on the decision making the seventh step. But before we can make a decision before we can really go in and say this is what I'm going to decide right now, we have to know what we want. And that's why on day one, the statement of desire, we have to get that nailed down, we have to know what's the one thing that we know we want you know, what is that one thing that we want? You know, when I asked people it's funny when I when I'm when I'm in a group of people, or I'm doing a seminar, you know, I ask people, what do you want? Most people hesitate? Or they can't tell me what exactly they want. Now, when I asked them what they don't want, they start spewing out all kinds of things. I don't want to be unhealthy. Or I don't want to you know, work, you know, 80 hours a week, oh, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be broke. I don't want to, but they can't tell me what they do want. And here's a little thing on this subconscious mind, which we'll get to that I think in day 10 I think but your subconscious mind does not know when you say you don't want Are you more or less I want more of this or I want less of this or I do want this or I don't want this, all it knows is this. You know, so when you say I don't want to be broke, your subconscious mind is hearing broke, dude, I'm gonna make you broke. When you know when you tell yourself I don't want to be unhealthy. Your subconscious mind tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, I'm gonna be unhealthy, unhealthy, that's when it gets it doesn't get to I do or more or less. So we have to be specific on that. And one of my mentors, Parma, Walmart. Now he says, if you are struggling in any area of your life, it's because you are not making a decision that you need to make. So if you're struggling in health, if you're struggling in your finances, or you're struggling in your career, it's because you are not making a decision that you need to make and that you probably know you need to make. 4:37 And a common reason for failing to become successful to become wealthy is the inability to make and stick with a decision. When you do make that decision. You have to stick to the decision. And if you look at a farmer, let's say you're you're you're a farmer, and one day you plant corn and you wake up the next Morning and you look out on your field, it's all bast, and you don't see any corn. And you say, damn, you know what I'm gonna plant soybeans. So you go dig all the corn up and you plant soybeans, and then you wake up the next day and look out there, and there's no soybeans. So you dig that up and you plant something else. things take time, when you make a decision, you have to stick to that decision. It takes time to develop, it takes time for that seed to mature, it takes time for that seed to incubate, and to grow. And people who can't reach decisions promptly and stick with them will fail to achieve if you don't stick to your stick to your decisions. You won't achieve it. You know, they they people who do that lack the desire of their own, and are thus they're easily influenced by the opinions of others, allowing others to do the thinking for them. And there is a great quote from Bernard, George Bernard Shaw on this. It's 2% of people think 3% of people think they think, and 95% of people would rather die than think, oh, oh, that's true. Oh, that is so true. We have minds of our own, which we must use to make decisions if you want to succeed. decisive people are undeterred by others criticisms, your How many times have you heard criticisms, and you just kind of bow down and, and people who are very decisive, are undeterred by that. What they want to do is what they're going to do, that's all there is to it, regardless of what someone else thinks, when you know, your definiteness of purpose, you know, your decision is sound, you know, you're not going to be deterred by other people, indecisive people, on the other hand, take others negative opinions to heart, and sometimes develop even inferior complexes as a result of that, you know, how many times have you told people, friends, families, whatever your ideas, and, and they started talking negative, now, you can't do that? How you gonna do that? Right? You know, so for most of us, what we do is when we do make decisions, up until now, hopefully this will help grow is we make decisions as backwards, we really do. We have been developed as a, as a society as a culture to really make decisions asked backwards, we think a decision is at the end of the line. So when we, when we have an idea, read the making the decision, what we'll do is what we'll say, Oh, that's a great idea. But I don't know the people that I need to know. So when I know the people, then I will go, and I'll make that decision, or I don't have the time, I don't have the money. When I have the money, I will make the decision, and I will go do that. Here's the thing, you're never going to know the people, you're never going to have the time you're never going to have the money, you first make the decision. See, we always have the decision decision on the back end. That's the decision goes on the front end, you make the decision, then you find the people, then you find the money, then you find the how you do that. Procrastination is the opposite of decisiveness, and is probably one of the most common obstacles that you must overcome. There's a great quote from Wayne Gretzky skate to the puck. So when you make a decision, 8:28 don't make a decision based on where you are now. Don't make a decision based on your current where you currently think you are. Make a decision based on where you're going to be in three years. decision based on when you're gonna be in five years, skate to the puck, shoot the puck out there and then skate to that make your decision based on that not your current realization of where you are. And here's the thing we talked about this a little bit ago. Don't tell anybody about your ideas. I'm telling you don't tell anybody, anybody about your ideas, except your mastermind group. And your supporters, the ones that are encouraging you do not tell family do not tell friends do not tell. And here's the thing The first time I read Think and Grow Rich, and it's it actually says in there. I thought it was because I didn't want anybody to steal my ideas. Don't tell anybody, because someone might just steal my idea. Well, let's push it. The reason we don't tell anybody is because that negative thoughts that we're going to get back and here's the thing, our family and friends, they absolutely love us. But they have their own bs thrown belief system. They don't want to see us get hurt. You know, they don't want us to be in pain. So they give us their Bs, saying, Oh, are you sure you want to do that? I don't know if you want to do that. Friends and relatives, while not meaning to be bad will handicap us with their opinions and their ridicule, which is meant sometimes meant to be humorous. We all have family and friends like that. So do not add it. One of the quotes in the book is, tell the world what you're going to do. But first, show it. Don't tell people to show people what you're going to do. So people who have failed to accumulate success have if you've failed to get where you want, without exception, have the habit of reaching decisions, if at all, very slowly, and up changing these decisions quickly and often. So that's really what today's challenge is about. Okay, so if you pull out your worksheet for today, today's challenge, you know, if you are, I'm gonna go through this, I'm gonna go through this worksheet with you download. If you're listening to anything else, download the worksheet, it's there for you. But page one, if you are struggling with any area of life, it's because you are not making the decision that you need to successful people, people reach decisions, quickly unsuccessful people do the opposite. So I want you to answer a few questions here. answer the following questions, I make decisions quickly, true or false. I would rather make my own decisions than rely on the opinions and advice of others. I rarely influenced by pinions of others, I have never lost out an opportunity because I failed to make a decision. True or false. I am slow to reverse any decisions that I make. So I want you to go and really think about those questions. The more truth obviously, the closer you are to having great decision making page to the challenge. What is an important decision that you are not making right now, I want you to sit down even in a dark room, meditate, whatever it takes, but sit down and get in a quiet spot and think think hard. What is an important decision that you are not making right now. It'll come to you, I promise you, it will come to you. If there's an error again, if you're struggling, just sit back. Ask ask what you know, what decision Am I not making and see what answers come back? Number two is why is it so difficult? What is preventing you from making that decision? What What is it that's holding you Why are you not making that decision? what's holding you back? And three? What specifically do you need to finalize your decision that more information of some kind, more resources? What concrete steps will you take together what you need? Now keep back now it goes on to keep your own cancel don't counsel don't tell other people reach your own decisions and follow them. So that is today chat is today's challenges. Let's get clear on what we want and make the decision once and for all draw the line in the damn sand. Make the decision until tomorrow. Tomorrow's is on the subconscious mind, which is probably one of my favorite chapters. Absolutely love the mind and the subconscious mind. So until tomorrow, I will talk to you later.

Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. Today we have a special guest Boyd Hamlin and we are going to talk about ACTiTUDE: Act your way into a positive life. Boyd has battled through 2 brain surgeries, lives with transverse Myelitis and has had to get back up many times in life after being knocked down. As a minister, speaker, trainer and coach, Boyd is all about 3 things: Encouraging, Equipping, and Empowering others to battle through and not go down. Boyd is the creator of The Hero Builder program to help influencers of youth set a character foundation they can build their lives upon. Currently, Boyd is working on a book called 'ACTiTUDE' to help others live their best lives. I love it when people bring their passion into their careers, when they turn huge life events into something that can help so many other people. Today we are thinking big on ACTiTUDE. Connect with Boyd Hamlin at the following social media link: Website https://www.boydhamlin.com/ Email Herobuilder2020@gmail.com Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Join the 7-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge https://bit.ly/tagrchallenge Podcast Transcription: (00:00): Welcome to the thinking big podcast. Today, we have a special guest Boyd Hamlin, and we're going to talk about aptitude act your way to a positive life. Boyd has battled through two brain surgeries lives with transverse myelitis and has got back up so many times after life has knocked him down as a minister speaker trainer and coach Boyd is all about three things, encouraging equipping and empowering others to battle through and not go down. Boyd is the creator of the hero builder program to help influencers of youth set a character foundation that they can build their lives upon. Currently, Boyd is working on a book called actitud to help others live their best lives. I absolutely love it when people bring their passion into their careers and when they turn huge life events into something that can help so many people. So today we are thinking big on aptitude. (01:26): I really want to welcome Boyd to to the podcast today before we get started and get into some of the fantastic stuff that you're doing. Tell the listeners a little bit about you. We'll absolutely thanks Sean, for having me on today. And my background really is been in youth ministry for over 20 years. I was in youth ministry for my very first time, just straight out of college in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I spent about seven years in there and then started speaking at a peer church organization for their conferences. And in that process, I was recognized by a church that's in Amarillo, Texas, and was asked to come and be an expert in their middle school ministry and their program. And my wife and I went and did that. And that was a great experience for Chevy years as well. (02:26): So you're probably, you're probably familiar with Borger. I am. I lived in Borger. Oh, you did? Yes. That is a fantastic place. And I do believe that if not in Borger, someplace around a community, the churches now call it hillside Christian Church. They've got a multisite campus there that is doing very well. They've got several of those in the panhandle area and the school very well, but I decided to take a challenge and come to New Mexico. I've been given a challenge for about five years consistently you need to plant a church. And I said, that's not for me. Well, I ended up taking the challenge anyway, because I was told you're too much in your comfort zone. And we came out to New Mexico to start a church plant. And I found out very quickly that I was out of my comfort zone, but I also was out of my strength zone. (03:25): And 12 years later we, we felt like we could be released from that church. My experience, it was really taken its toll financially. And so I left that particular place that we were renting that day. I wanted to keep integrity and pay them their last check. When I drove away from that facility I had this nudge, you know, it's a lot of people say, it's a spirit speaking to you and it's to go to this school that you've been helping as a church with their low income families with meals for the last four years. And I thought, you know what? I don't really want to go to a school today because there's kids in there. And I really don't want to be around young people today. It was kind of a crazy moment. It's like now what do I do now? (04:17): Right. And I did end up turning around in a Walmart parking lot and headed back to that school and met with the assistant principal. And that later introduced me to the principal. And it was in that moment, they asked me, can you create a character growth program for our school? We're having issues with our kids. And all the programs we've used before just don't seem to work the way we need them to. So over the course of the next month, I painstakingly went through with pen and paper. What, what really kind of program would they need? What kind of thing can they use that simple yet gets them great results fast. And I came up with the hero builder and it is a great character growth program. And the school actually saw results within two weeks. And now it's in about six different schools and they're seeing the same exact thing. (05:22): And right after that experience I'll just throw this in. Sean, just, just for fun. I thought that was building some momentum and that was a new direction that I was going to be going in. Right. And October the 11th of 2018, I told my wife I'm going out for a walk. I just wanted to just spend some time thinking about some things and hopefully strategically thinking about some things and something popped the, on the left side of my head in the back. And what was a 20 minute walk, ended up turning into an hour for me to get home all of my right side shut down. And my head just it felt like a vertigo is what it really felt like. Right. And just knew that I had something wrong. I had had a brain surgery in 1995 with what they call a main geomap or a cavernous malformation. (06:33): And the chance of me having another one was, was very good at that time. But they said it shouldn't bother you for the rest of your life. Well, it came a little too soon and I ended up going to the Barrow neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona for my second brain surgery. And in the, in the process of the last 18 months almost two years, two and a half years I've been doing a recovery from that and just getting my feet back underneath me. And it's been a, it's been a challenge. It's been a challenge yet to say the least, (07:13): How do you, you know what, we'll get back into other stuff, but on the, on the hero builder stuff, how do you think that can work in this new world of home-based stuff, where we're all staying at home or isolating where, you know, my granddaughter, matter of fact, she's not going back to school this year, she's doing everything from home. How do you think that same type of, you know, hero builder framework? How does that work from a home standpoint? (07:40): Oh, that's a great question. And it really can work from a home standpoint. I think that because of all of the problems that we have now with with our school system, with the coronavirus and what it's you know, what it's caused for Asha in that field. I think that my focus has had to shift a little bit from schools as a physical location to families and to parents. And so I think it really can work there as well. This program not only has a, a, a really detailed manual that I put together for it, but I've also done videos and training sessions for teachers and parents. And they're really good there. It's real simple, but it's a very good like I said, just a little while ago, it gets really good results. I did not purposely write it for preschool. And there is a preschool here in New Mexico that is called the Primo preschool in the whole state. And I don't know if you if you've ever been to a preschool, but this preschool has 1200 kids in it, and I'm thinking, wow, 1200 hours every single day that you guys deal with (09:06): That does not sound like a lot of fun. (09:09): Yeah. That, that does not sound like a lot of fun. And the principal of that school said, I want your program. And I did let her know. I didn't intend for it to be for preschool is for elementary and middle school students, but she wanted in any way. And she's been using the program in her preschool for the last three years, and nothing has changed with the program. She's not utilized everything that's included in it, but what she needs, she has taken from it and has made a culture there at her preschool with her teachers and parents that she has strived for. Oh, that's fantastic. It's really, really exciting. (09:50): So what is kind of the framework of the, of that program? (09:55): The framework of that program is, you know, a lot of programs. Of course, I looked into this before putting it together. A lot of programs do a lot of teaching and we absolutely need teaching. But along with teaching, I thought that it was really important for the students to see it modeled. And then once the teachers and their parents see the students acting into one of those character skills that is in their program, that it's celebrated right in, in some way. And one of the big deals with the hero builder is every, every month, every week, let's say, let's say it's a Monday. You walk into your classroom or into your living room nowadays, to do your homeschooling. And the kids are introduced to a word that they're going to work on for the week. It's a emotional, social, emotional learning platform for character development. (10:57): But let's say the word is just very simply helpful. There is a one pager in there that defines the word, and that gives them a, a little kind of a three by five card. That's got that word on. It was a couple of ideas to get their juices flowing and get their creativity going. How can I be helpful today to others? Right? And then they are able to be helpful to others. Not, not just be told to be helpful, but everyone is working on this together. And at the end of the day, they get to write in a hero's journal. What kind of things they did during that day that was helpful to somebody else, or what did other people do for me that was helpful for me. And at the end of the week, they get to share that with one another and celebrate that not always with a pizza party, but just be recognized. (11:55): It gives some affirmation to that young person to say, you're heading in the right direction. And we want to recognize that personally and visually today, rather than you guessing all the time, if you did a good job, there's that, there's that question is it's typically deemed as a two year old question that I do. Good. And I think that that's a question that maybe started when we were two, but we've never grown out of that affirmation. And I'm a little bit of a just kudos, you know, the attaboys that people need to know that, Hey, you're doing good (12:34): And everybody needs that. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody needs that. And I think somehow we need to learn how to do it to ourselves too. Cause we we're, we're, we're fantastic at, you know, getting ourselves you know, in a negative way. But doing it in a positive way, we all need that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, (12:54): Absolutely agreed. (12:56): And so like, one of the things that I've started doing with with my granddaughter is we got her a, a journal. And one of the things in the journal is daily gratitudes that she writes down what she's grateful for, you know, that day. And I think these types of programs are extremely, not only I think, are they extremely important but they're very much needed. And I think it's needed even more now with environment that we're in than ever before. I think we have to have these programs for the kids. We've got to be able to get these kids to have those affirmations, have those positive beliefs, have those positive thoughts and God sitting at home. It's just, boy, it seems like it's going to be a hard, hard road. (13:47): Yeah. Do you mind if I share a story from one of the schools that use this program? Absolutely. Absolutely. There is a school in North Carolina, a Clover garden. I do believe it's a consolidated school and the way that they use the program, there are also mentioned their third year of using different aspects of it with their students and with their staff to maintain that culture that they want there at that school, there was a young boy, a first grader who during recess, they have been outside playing on the playground, which, you know, then on playgrounds nowadays, they have the wood chips all around so that kids don't have to play on, see Matt all the time in different places. And the teacher called the students in from their recess time. And this young man and his buddy were still hanging around the slide they weren't playing, but the teacher couldn't figure out what they were doing. (14:48): And when she went out to ask them what was on, Hey guys, it's time to come in one. The young man said, I'm, I'm being helpful today to my friend. He lost his tooth on the playground and we have to find it. And it sounds so silly, but that young man took that word so seriously. He had to not think about being helpful. He had to physically be helpful to his friend until they found that too. And the good news is they found it. And that young man got awarded for being helpful and being a hero to his classmates that day. So that it's really good. They're always looking for ways that they can do what we're asking them to do. (15:33): Right. Oh, that's, that is a, that's a great story. And, and again, I think this is, I think we're missing a lot of that in today's education. It is, you know, it seems to be that it's just more, you know, you're gonna learn this and not, I don't even think they're actually being taught. They're just being taught to a test. And in a sense, they're not being taught how to think for themselves. And I think that, you know, programs like this, you know, teach kids how to think for themselves, you know, actually how to think and not just what to think. (16:08): Absolutely. I think you're right. This character program and just like other character programs, all we're trying to do is help the students by laying a foundation that they can truly build their lives. Right. They're going to forget taking that task, but they're not going to forget helping somebody else standing out and be an extraordinary being respectful to those around them. And yeah, there's 36 of the character words, but it's just a start. It's not a, it's not a complete list, but it is a start and it is a detailed enough of a list that it does take a while to get through. If we were doing this in a physical location for a school, there's also three assemblies that I built into it that I don't have to actually show up and do personally it's for the principal or for their teachers and staff, or if they find a parent that's great communicator, right? (17:10): They can do it for the students and save themselves a lot of money as a school district, by having people come in and do an assembly here and there, this program allows you to do three assemblies by themselves for their own student, body and video scripts on how to create the videos using their own students and their own staff on this is the word we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about the word honesty today. And it's somebody that they recognize from their school who is making that video sending that video out to the classrooms on a weekly basis, right. Instead of them to see my face, which, you know, I I've done the videos for backup, but at the same time, it's like, you know what? They don't know who I am. Right. They know who their teachers are, their principals and fellow students. (18:01): Yeah. And you're absolutely right. They're going to remember when you put emotion with something that you learn you for me, that's when you remember. So yeah. That kid's going to remember that day that he was helping, you know, they're going to remember these things cause we're putting emotion with it. I guarantee that the kid has no idea what they did in school that day. Absolutely not. There's no way. He remembers a damn thing from class two plus two, whatever it was. I guarantee he doesn't remember a damn thing, but he remembers that and he will (18:35): Mean you imagine that young man go home to his parents and saying, you know what I did today, I helped a buddy find a tooth on the playground. He didn't say a thing about what happened in the classroom, nothing in the lunch room. There's nothing exciting in there, but he's T he's telling you what he's learning. Yeah. And that was his idea, right? That was his idea. Sean, you brought up earlier of affirmations for ourselves. And I was doing a quick read through the book of James of all places this last week. And there was one verse that stood out to me and it was like, wow, I've never seen that before in all the years that I've looked through that particular book, but in verse 25 in the first chapter, it says that a person of action finds delight and affirmation in that action. (19:31): And so it dawned on me one day, okay. We can actually encourage ourselves by way of acting on what we need to act on for other people during the day. So what I've ended up doing is I created a new created a new term. And it is going into a book. I don't know when it will be published, but it is going to do a book. And the new word is attitude. No, there's a lot of people that always go around and say, you didn't have a positive attitude, you to work on your attitude. And for me coming out of a very serious brain surgery experience, having a positive attitude, just wasn't cutting the mustard, right. It just wasn't happening all the time because I did battle through a, a big big season of depression. And I thought, I'm not going to let this I'm not gonna let this get me. (20:28): I'm going to battle through this and make the most of it that I can. And what I started doing was I started calling five people a day to affirm them and to encourage them and much to my surprise, every I hung up, I was encouraged. I was affirmed, Hey, you lifted somebody up today. Way to go. Yeah. And and I, I think that adding action to my attitude has really helped me to move in towards towards the positive life that I want. And so I really am pretty sure it's about that new word just for myself, if that's all the person that helps, it's fine, but actitud in acting my way into a positive life that has a lot to do and feeds right into this hero builder program. Yeah. (21:23): Yeah. And you know, and that's the thing. We can't have what we don't give. And that's, it's a kind of a, to me it's a, it's a law of the university, you know, we, we cannot have what we don't give and if we don't give gratitudes, we don't give, you know, uplifting advice or uplifting feelings and emotions to other people. We, we don't, you know, we can't necessarily have them ourselves. We have to give them always give before you get, that was a hard lesson to learn for me. I was always wanting to just, I just want them all. Yeah. I learned that you have to give, to get it's, it's kind of a law. (22:01): Yes. Kind of a law. And it's kind of funny how that works. Isn't that? Sure. Yeah. (22:05): Tell me a little bit about a John Maxwell. I know you're involved with the John Maxwell team as well. And that is, to me, that's such a fantastic organization from over many different aspects, but from a leadership and from a coaching aspect, it is a, that is one fantastic company or one fantastic family, I guess you could say of people. It's a huge, huge group, but it is a very meaningful, (22:32): It is. It is Sean, right. I S I started my JMT journey back in 2014. And I had just I had just got, got myself into the middle of his church plant that I was doing, but it just for me personally I have had a rough go in church work. It's not always been rough, but there's been some rough spots and I needed kind of a, and you said the word earlier, kind of a family variance in my personal development. And I was at a place where I needed to grow myself more. I had spent years and years growing and serving others. And I made the big mistake of forgetting to grow myself and forgetting to lead myself in all of the things that I was telling other people to do for them. I think John has said before that it's it's easy to lead other people, but it's really, really difficult to lead yourself. (23:38): And I had that task in front of me. And when I joined the JMT and ended up going to Orlando, Florida for the first international Maxwell conference, I didn't know what to expect. I just was glad to be around like minded people. Yeah. And like valued people when that first session happens, when they stand on their chairs in this big ballroom full of people, holding up numbers, saying, Hey, come over here, sit with us, you know, can you make sure on your landlord, you've got the right number. You're at the right table. Once I got to the right place where I was setting, I just kind of had to sit there and tear up for a minute because I knew I was in a good environment. I knew I was in a place of people that were ahead of me, people that were a little bit more intelligent than me in lots and lots of different areas. (24:36): And I was really part of the family. And I didn't really feel that way. It should be called the John Maxwell family. Yeah, absolutely felt that way when I was in the room. And a lot of the experience that I had there is kind of weird. I have to, I love to interact and ask people, Hey, how are you doing? What's your name, all of that. But just to step back and let people do that to you was a very different experience. I have served on the president's advisory council through the allaying that they called the impact on. They did a lot of calls through impact on calls, you know, how are you influencing and making a difference in the world? And we would just highlight people that were on the John Maxwell team family throughout the world. And I did that for about two and a half years with Sherry Griffin, who is a fellow JMT here. And we had a ball, we had a ball for the last two and a half years. Just help him bring the best out in others so that they could present themselves well during those calls and the JMG business on the other end it's going okay, but it's not going the direction that I was hoping that it would go right this many years later, but we can't lose hope. We got to keep moving. (25:58): Well, no, and, and I think it's really more when you get with likeminded people and it doesn't matter what kind of organization it is, but when you get in with, you know, and, and there's a lot of people in personal development, there's, you know, the Tony Robbins, there's, you know, the John Maxwell, there's so many others out there, but when you get with people who are all hell bent on learning, and they're, they're just, they have a burning passion to learn to grow. I think what comes out of that is much more than just what they're doing or what they're teaching. It, it actually, to me, it grows you in a way, especially when you go to these huge events. And when you go to these events, the energy that people put out, the energy that you get, the energy you receive to me is far more valuable than the content you learn or the things you learn, because at those exact moments, that's when we grow. (26:53): I mean, that's when we get that burst of energy from, you know, three, four, five, 6,000 people, there's nothing like that. I mean, that, that is such a, and I think God, that's one thing with, you know, with what's going on. I think that we're going to miss that more than anything is we can do these things online. We can do these big conferences online, but we don't have that energy. And you do get some, but you just don't have that energy that everyone's giving out. I personally cannot wait until we can go back to do, to do those things. (27:27): Oh, you don't want that as actually, right. I, I know and respect that. They're really making the leader shift this year, this, this month actually to do the virtual international Maxwell event, but you're right. I won't name her by name here, but I always, for the last five years, I always looked forward to showing up at the, I am she's I know you're talking about you're going down, you're talking about it. She's there to hug you. (27:59): You ever tried to not get hugged. (28:02): I have tried to not get hugs (28:04): First year there. I was like, okay, well, what's going on? I go down, I (28:08): Tackled me. (28:11): She literally tackled me to give me a hug. So that was, (28:16): Oh, she's a fantastic person. And not only is it there at that event, by the way it is beyond that event. Yeah, no one of the things that happened, you know, because of the brain surgery I experienced at the end of 2018 she gave me a call right around January of 19. She gave me a call just to see how I was doing. I didn't even know that she knew I had this massive procedure and a was home recovering from it, but somehow she knew, and she just had to reach out and give her a phone call and hug you through the phone line. And that's the kind of person that she is. Yeah. And then you entered the big room and it's like, okay, there's, there's more people like her in here. And you almost have to say, you know, what enough hugs already? (29:06): Okay. I've got to find my seat. I don't know if you've had the privilege of speaking during one of these stage times during the IMCs live, I've got a chance to do a couple of those. And you prepare, you prepare as much as you can and being a minister and a speaker. I didn't think it was possible to speak in under three minutes and say anything. And then we had learned with our speaking coach and I was able to do that. But I remember the very first time that I spoke from the stage at an IMC, and it was in 2015 and Les Brown was there and he was invited into the room to be called up front, to speak into us. And I thought, wow, what a great, what a great communicator. He is the best. And man, the guy that God has got to speak after him, man, good luck. And Ronnie takes the mic and he says, okay, boy, would you come up front? I thought, Oh no. And I remember whispering in his ear. That's not fair. (30:17): Yeah. (30:17): You just have less Brown up here. And then he called on me, but I went ahead and did the best I could. And, and what have you went back to my seat and thought, man, I hope I didn't wet myself here. It was just a great opportunity. And it does build your encouragement in yourself just by being able to be in a room like that. And it doesn't matter to me. The standing ovations are there and, and ready to ready and queued for everybody. It doesn't matter. It just does something to, yeah. And it's good. So you're, you're almost ready to get back on that plane and go back to your home state and make a difference. Cause you know, you're not alone. There's a thousands of people around the world doing the same thing. (31:05): Yeah. I remember the first time I had to get up and speak on at a JMT and it was probably the most frightening thing I'd done. And, but then I look back and it's like, I could have without John Maxwell, that team and that whole building into ourselves, I would never be able to do a podcast like this. Absolutely not. I could not. It w it took almost every ounce of courage when they, when they first, do you remember when they say whoever has a red dot under their chair? Know, I don't want to give too much up. You might have to come up. I was two seconds from getting up and out the door. So just the growth that happens in those environments is absolutely unbelievable. So what part of New Mexico are you in? (31:50): I am in Rio. Rancho, New Mexico. Albuquerque. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right outside of Albuquerque. Not very far from there. And so I get to interact with a few JMT peers who are in this area, at least the ones that reached back out and you don't want to be forceful and all of that. But you know one of those JMT years, her and I, speaking of podcasts, we started a podcast also. And what is so funny is that we don't have a clue what we're doing, but we're, we're, we're doing what we've been told. We're we're building our wings on the way down. Do it messy. We're yeah, we're doing, we're doing, you know, like what your podcast titled is, we're thinking big man. We're we don't know if this is going to go anywhere. I just want to monetize it in any way, shape or form, but you know what? We're having a good time doing it. And we are interacting with people that really just want to be heard and they want to be seen. And a podcast has been a great way to give them a voice. (32:49): It's all about taking action, big, hairy, dirty action. Get in there and get that crap done. (32:58): I like it. So the one thing that you hear at every (33:02): Restaurant, you'd go to an Albuquerque as a red or green, (33:06): Red or green. I'm red, you know, you're red. I used to be green. Oh, I can't do green. And especially if it's hot, if it is, I wouldn't do a place out here. I'll say the name of the place. Sadie's I love Sadie's. Oh, say this is one of my favorite you're you're you're originally from around here too. Aren't you? I grew up in Santa Fe. So, you know, Sadie's do, the lady came over to the table. She said red or green, and I didn't know what to say. So I say green, and when she brought me back my plate, I got one bite off of that plate and I couldn't feel my face and said, do you want to have the box set up? I don't need, I don't even know if I'm talking correctly right now. I can't feel anything. (33:49): I think didn't they just close the original Sadie's down because of this. Yeah. That's what I heard. That's that's unfortunate. (33:57): Yeah, it is. You know, you go to one, you go to shady. Is there a place like that? That gives green seriously hot chili. You can go right directly to the dentist and have them do whatever they want, (34:10): Because it doesn't matter. You can't feel a damn thing. And you've got your sinus is clear. (34:18): I would guess that (34:20): If you went there, it might actually cure COVID (34:24): Hip mine. (34:26): It might actually just take care of it. We just need to ship that stuff everywhere. (34:31): Yeah, you should. You should get, get in touch with the right people and tell them that increase the green Kelly sales around here and cure COVID (34:40): That's right. Well, I'm telling you, it's it's been an absolute pleasure and blast having you on the podcast. The information is, is fantastic. What's the best place for people to contact you? (34:54): Well, I would say right now the best place is a email address. I've got, I've got a couple of websites that are kind of in transition right now. I'm trying to hang on to the domains and what have you. But the best place to reach out to me is hero builder 2020 at Gmail. Okay. And if anyone wanted information on the hero builder program, that's a great place to get in touch with this. If they also wanted to just reach out for a little encouragement for themselves. Yeah. Love to do that, but that's a great place to reach out to me and my cohost on the podcast that I'm doing is Stacy Johnston. And she and I both look at that website that, that Gmail account and make sure that there's nobody in there that we've not noticed who has sent maybe a recent email in our direction. So we're, we're we're just trying to be as encouraging and as as positive of individuals as we can, or the people that we get to deal with on a daily basis. And yeah, (36:09): And also the people that are listening to this podcast right now, jump over to that podcast. It's the, he rebuilt if they just type in, he wrote builder in their podcast platform, they're going to, they're going to find it. (36:20): Yeah, I think, I think they they'll be able to find it. Mine is a very, very simple right now, and it's on anchor.fm and it's a free platform. And that was that was a big plus for me that it was free and a good place to can just get started. Yeah. That's exactly what, what we're doing with that, but I'm glad what you're doing and what you're doing on thinking big a podcast and Jackie, just encouraging people in the way that you are. And you know, just making sure that you know, people that that are out there not only have a voice, but but they also can get a word of encouragement and, and they can get an also an action step. Hopefully they can take an action step away and say, Hey, I'm going to go be helpful to somebody today. I'm going to go, I'm going to go be respectful to my day and lift up their spirits. And hopefully in turn, that will lift up mine and nine times out of 10. It absolutely does that. And and yeah, this has been a great, great time that they show. I appreciate you, (37:27): You know, and all this is going to be in the, in the show notes as well at the links to to get ahold of get ahold of you. And again, I'm, I think I'm gonna go find someone's tooth today. I think that's my goal. I'm gonna go find someone's tooth. (37:38): You know what? You, you go and do that. And hopefully it's not one of mine. (37:43): I hope it's not one of mine. I can't find my own, but it's been, it's been fantastic having you on and I can't wait to, so are you going to be on the end of August on the virtual, (37:57): I am not going to be on the virtual. I'm going to take a, what they call administry. Of course I'm not in a big church right now, doing anything with the staff, but a, what they call it, an administry is a sabbatical and I'm sure to step back and do a little bit of reflection and stuff. And you know, what, what you guys got in store for me and kind of reassess things and readjusting things. I think that's going to be important for me (38:24): Without reflection. All of our journey is a much less insightful. We've got to look back and kind of take an inventory and look at what we've learned. I think that's an important step that many don't many don't do. They don't take step back and, and learn from, from what we've gone through. (38:45): Absolutely. Yeah. Have you ever heard the term you've got to connect the dots? Yep. You got to take time to connect the dots. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it does. It really feels like that. And I, I told someone last week and I've been trying to connect the dots for so long, Sean, that it feels like I am an employee at the dip and dots, ice cream, you know what it is tedious at times, but I think we, we still have to keep trying to connect those dots and see, what am I, what am I supposed to do? What shift do I need to make to enter into the next thing, right. Is, you know, this for me. Yeah, (39:25): Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, again, it's been a pleasure having you on, I look forward to talking in the future and again, thank you so much for providing so much you know, insight and so much information to, to my listeners. And, and, and hopefully I know for a fact that people listening are going to get something out of this. So I truly appreciate your insight. (39:45): Yeah. Thank you very much, Sean. I appreciate you having me on today.

Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. This episode is part of a special 14 day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. Today we are going over the ninth step to success, the step on the power of the mastermind, the literal driving force. I recently hosted a live 14 days Think and Grow Rich challenge that benefited Feeding America and I thought it would be great to put the challenge right here on the podcast. So for 14 straight days I will be releasing a new podcast and the associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps of Think and Grow Rich plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. It doesn't matter if you have ever read the book or not, the challenge is designed for anyone to do. There is a link in the show notes so you can sign up for free and get download all of the challenge worksheets and a PDF copy of the original Think and Grow Rich Today we are thinking big on the power of the mastermind. The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. https://www.sean-osborn.com/14daychallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching Website http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until tomorrows challenge, remember to always think big Ratings and reviews directly impact search rankings for the Thinking Big Podcast. So please help and rate and review the podcast. Episode Transcription: (00:00): Welcome to the thinking big podcast. This episode is part of a special 14 day think and grow rich challenge. And today we are going over the ninth step to success. The step on the power of the mastermind, this is literally the driving force of success. And I recently hosted a live 14 day think and grow rich challenge. And I thought it would be a fantastic idea to put it out here on the podcast so everybody could listen whenever they wanted. So for 14 days I will be releasing a new podcast and the associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps in think and grow rich, plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. And let me tell you, it doesn't matter if you've ever read the book or not. This challenge is designed for anybody to do. There is a link in the show notes, so you can sign up for free and get all the download challenges, all the worksheets and even a free PDF copy of the original book think and grow rich. So today we are thinking big on the mastermind. (01:04): Welcome to the thinking big podcast with Sean Osborne, the show helping you think bigger into your life and potential Sean believes, but equipping you with the tools, strategies, and philosophies required to be successful in all aspects of your life. You can achieve anything you believe in empowering. Our own growth makes a deeply positive and lasting impact on our lives community and our world. Now here's Sean. (01:29): Hello everyone. And welcome to day seven of the 14 day think and grow rich challenge today. We are doing the challenge on the power of the mastermind. And I can tell you that this is one of the chapters. This is one of the things that has made the most difference in my development in my success is the mastermind. It is one of the most powerful tools that we will actually discuss within this entire thing to grow rich chap thinker grow rich, a challenge. They're all important, but this is the one that has made the biggest amount of change in my life. And Hill describes the mastermind, you know, as being defined as, you know, coordinated knowledge and effort in the spirit and harmony between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose. And you're hearing, especially nowadays, you're hearing a lot of people talk about masterminds and they're having a mastermind. (02:33): And there's a big difference between the mastermind that Hill's talking about. And some of the stuff that you're, that you're seeing out on the market that you're reading about, that's, it's different. So a lot of things that you're saying out there are really not what I would consider masterminds. They're more workshops or more book studies. They're more, you know, people could call this what we're doing here, a mastermind on and grow rich. But that is not what he's, what he's talking about. The mastermind he's talking about is bringing people together in a spirit of harmony that creates a third mind, a more powerful mind. And I have discovered personally that Mashburn groups have unleashed my most important efforts. My most important efforts of everything that I've done have come as a result of a mastermind you in the form of new ideas, in the form of inspiration, you know, previously unknown resources that are brought to me. (03:34): And most importantly, it's really a spiritual energy that goes beyond her own intelligence and reasoning. When you, you, to me, you do mastermind, you have mastermind groups with people in order to access the mastermind to access the mind when you bring people together. And you're in harmony, you have access to a much more powerful mind that the two of you or the three of you are having many people don't have individually and mastermind groups is one of the essential things behind every successful person that I know. And if you go to a line one 22 within this chapter, and he says, a group of brains coordinated or connected in a spirit of harmony will provide more thought energy than a single brain. Just as a group of electric batteries will provide more power than a single battery. And I think a better illustration that really is, if you look at what they call draft horses, you know, that pool, each draft horse can pull around 8,000 pounds. (04:44): So you would think that two draft horses would do 16,000 pounds. I mean, I'm not a math genius, but a plus eight to 16, but that's not the case to to draft horses can actually pull 24,000 pounds working together. And we are the same with our brains. No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind. What I call the mind, the mastermind. And I am always in masterminds. So this is one of the challenges is in the book, but I am always in masterminds. I have been for years and I'm normally in two different masterminds right now. I'm in two different masterminds and actually run a mastermind as well. But they are that important that I always have multiple masterminds that I'm in and some of them are different. So I've been in different masterminds for different things. (05:43): General masterminds are fantastic where you're a group of likeminded people, and you're just brainstorming. You're accessing, you know, all of these things that you can't access by yourself because no one person has enough experience, enough education, and the ability to accumulate anything of great success, whether it's be fortune or whether it be and whatever it is that you're wanting to do, one is not a big enough number. And there is, you know, seldom talk, you know, about this principle behind you at the six exit, the success of every winning athlete, every famous musician, every wealthy business person I've ever known or have ever studied. And I can tell you everyone, you know, no one, it's not the, you know, it's not the IQ, it's not the college GPA. It's not the right family. It's, it's not the, you know, good looks. They have surrounded themselves with other successful people. (06:44): And the concept of surrounding ourselves with, you know, successful people thinking big people is as old as man itself. It's in history. If you look at ancient Greece and you look at, you know, bled Owen, Aristotle, and Socrates, all surrounded themselves with those who would challenge their thing and expand access banned that arsenal of possibilities. And I've already mentioned in a previous previous challenge, you know, in finger Ridge Hill talks about Carnegie's secret of success. His law of success and Carnegie himself had a mastermind, you know, a group that he surrounded himself with for advice, for counsel, for personal cooperation and other businesses, they all had groups of people that they discussed with and a mastermind with. And probably one of the most famous quotes and regards to masterminding in, in a sense comes from Jim Roan. And he's famously said, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. (07:49): And I like to dig a little deeper, and it's the five people who you are most in line with most you you're influenced by if you, if I go meet with any person, any client, and it doesn't matter. And I see who they're hanging out with, I can tell, tell them exactly where they will be in five years, unless you grow, unless you change. Unless you have masterminds with bigger people in you align yourself with more successful people. You're going to be the average of the five people that you're hanging out with and look around, look around in your life. And I can tell you if you, if you honestly look around those principles are absolutely confirmed. And I had the thoughts of my first company when I was with very successful people. My first company, you know, these people, I got onto their thought vibration by being in mass quote masterminds with these people that they're, that vibration of thought. (08:46): They really expected me to do these things. I expected more when I was within a mastermind or when I'm within masterminds of successful. And if you go to lines 56, you know, he'll says no individual may have great power without availing himself of the mastermind. Anybody you've looked at anybody you've seen that is successful has had a mastermind behind them. Henry Ford, you know, talks about it in the book. You know, he's what he had. He had three months of school, you know, he was uneducated his illiterate, but he could push the button on his desk. Any one of a, you know, hundreds of buttons. I'm not sure how many buttons he had, but he pushed a button and he could get any general knowledge that he wanted. You know, Andrew Carnegie, you know, had one per his steel business, that's it? He, wasn't a huge steel person. (09:38): What he, his mastermind helped him do that. You know, Franklin D Roosevelt had one that he called. I think he actually called it the brain trust. So this whole purpose of the mastermind challenge is to align yourself with a group of as many people as you think it's needed for the creation of carrying out your plan or plans for the accumulation of whatever success you want, whether it's money, whether it's in your career, whether it's in your relationship. But I can tell you this before forming your mastermind Alliance, you need to decide what advantages and what benefits you offer as an individual member to your group and return for your cooperation. It's like anything else in life, you know, nothing's free, nothing's free. What can you offer your mastermind in return for what you get from them and arrange to meet? And, you know, once you get your mastermind, you know, once you, you, you've got your mastermind going, arrange to meet with the members of your mastermind, as often as possible, they see as much as, you know, twice a week until you have perfectly aligned yourself with everybody within that group. (10:48): And for instance, my masterminds, we meet most of my masterminds. We meet every other week, but in between the masterminds, I have calls and talks and zooms and whatever technology we can use to communicate with the other members of the mastermind. So that even though the group only meets once every two weeks, there, there is not a week that goes by that I don't talk with at least one or two people from one of my masterminds. And you need to maintain really. He says that in the, in the book, you need to maintain perfect harmony between yourself and every member of your mastermind. And he says, if you fail to carry this out doesn't I think he says out, you know, carry this instruction, know to the letter you may expect to meet with failure. Now we're going to go through the mastermind tool in a second. (11:35): So this is the challenge for the day. You know, here, here's the actual challenge. And the goal of this is really two part one to start thinking about your mastermind and who you'd want to be in it. You know, that's got a spot where you can list people who you want to be in your mastermind based on what they bring to the table. And honestly, there's, there's two ways that you can go about doing a mastermind. You can create one yourself, or you can join someone else's mastermind. There's the two I've done them, both. I paid the two that I'm in right now. I pay for, I pay for the host of the mastermind and what, what that's buying me is their connections and aligning me with people. They're very good at doing what they do. And they align. They align the groups with other people that will all benefit each other. (12:27): So do not be afraid of going out and searching and paying for a mastermind. Again, you can start your own. You can do, you know, however you want to do your mastermind, but align yourself with more successful people. Here's the thing you don't want to be the biggest fish in the pond. You don't want to be the biggest fish in the pond, but at the same time, you cannot be such a small minnow to sharps. Cause you won't be able to benefit. Again, part of this is looking at what you can offer them. So, as an example, if I was to go into a mastermind with, you know, let's say Tony Robbins and John Maxwell and Elon Musk and all these people that have a thought vibration, that's way up here. I would be, I'm too small about fish. I would not benefit them. Like they would benefit me. (13:15): And it's almost like a high school, you know, I hit set, but you want to be with people that are within your thought or just above your thought to challenge you, to push you. You do not want to be the biggest fish. And once you're the biggest fish in your mastermind, it's time to find another mastermind. It's time to start another mastermind. It's time to go out and, and, and, and look for another mastermind to be in. And the second part of the challenges really start to sit down and figure out what you can offer as a benefit to other people in a mastermind. And I'm not talking about just technical things like, Oh, I can offer it things. You as a person, what can you offer? It's much think of what can you offer as you, not as what you do as what you are, what can you offer is what you are young, what things have you done in life? (14:04): And what challenges have you conquered? You know, what problems have you solved? What are your superpowers? You know, what are, you know, what are some of the things that, that you've done that come easy to you? You know, start thinking of those things because it's not, again, I get a lot of questions on people like, well, I can only offer this and this it's not the, it's not the technical things. I don't know how else to describe. It's not the tangible things. It's intangible things. It's the things that make you, and I'm telling you this, every single person watching this, every single person in this challenge has a ton to offer. Every single person has a ton to offer. We need to recognize that. Remember, as he'll said at the beginning, we need to recognize already in us, you have it there. So now we're going to pull this together. (14:56): We're going to start creating a mastermind. You're going to start looking at other people. You're going to start trying to develop these relationships and these groups of people that will absolutely push you and expect more of you than you do of yourself. So here's, today's challenge. It's again, it's the mastermind challenge. Do this one again, this is probably one of the, the best tools for success that, that, that I can talk to you about this. This will give you more bang for buck. You have to do all of the steps. Don't don't get me wrong. I have to go, but you will get so much out of a mastermind. So until tomorrow, thank you. Thanks everybody for stopping by at night. Thanks everyone for playing full out in this challenge. It's unbelievable seeing what people are doing in this challenge is absolutely fantastic. It's amazing. I will see everybody tomorrow night start thinking about your masterminds.